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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, t 

Chap. . 

Shelf j2i.2=!\ILA 3 i 

1 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, j 












































♦ 



AULD L1CHT IDYLS 




/ r 

J. M.' BARRIE 

AUTHOR OF 


“THE LITTLE MINISTER,” “WHEN A 
WINDOW IN THRUMS,” “ MY LADY 


MAN’S SINGLE,” “A 
NICOTINE,” ETC. 


NEW YORK 

LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY 

43, 45 and 47 East Tenth Street 



TO 


FREDERICK GREENWOOD 


t 


< 



CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— The School-House, ...... 7 

II.— Thrums, 15 

III.— The Auld Licht Kirk, 64 

TV. — Lads and Lasses, 97 

V. — The Auld Lichts in Arms, . . . .116 

VI.— The Old Dominie, 131 

VII.— Cree Queery and Mysy Drolly, . . . 145 

VIII.— The Courting of T’ no whead’s Bell, . .156 

IX.— Davit Lunan’s Political Reminiscences, . 195 

X.— A Very Old Family, 205 

XI. — Little Rathie’s “Bural,” .... 216 

XII.— A Literary Club, 230 

















































































































































. 

















































































AITLD LICHT IDYLS. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. 

Early this morning I opened a window in 
my school-house in the glen of Quharity, awak- 
ened by the shivering of a starving sparrow 
against the frosted glass. As the snowy sash 
creaked in my hand, he made off to the water- 
spout that suspends its “ tangles” of ice over a 
gaping tank, and, rebounding from that, with 
a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed 
through the network of wire and joined a few 
of his fellows in a forlorn hop round the hen- 
house in search of food. Two days ago my 
hilarious bantam -cock, saucy to the last, my 
cheeriest companion, was found frozen in his 

own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three 
7 


8 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


pieces by his side. Since then I have taken 
the hens into the house. At meal-times they 
litter the hearth with each other’s feathers; 
but for the most part they give little trouble, 
roosting on the rafters of the low-roofed kitchen 
among staves and fishing-rods. 

Another white blanket has been spread upon 
the glen since I looked out last night ; for over 
the same wilderness of snow that has met my 
gaze for a week, I see the steading of ‘Waster 
Lunny sunk deeper into the waste. The 
school-house, I suppose, serves similarly as a 
snow-mark for the people at the farm. Unless 
that is Waster Lunny ’s grieve foddering the 
cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. 
The ghostlike hills that pen in the glen have 
ceased to echo to the sharp crack of the sports- 
man’s gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a 
warning to every rabbit and partridge in the 
valley) ; and only giant Catlaw shows here and 
there a black ridge, rearing his head at the en- 
trance to the glen and struggling ineffectually 
to cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of all 
I think, as I close the window hastily, is the 


THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. 


9 


open farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the 
snow where they were last flung by Waster 
Lunny’s herd. Through the still air comes 
from a distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork : 
a robin, perhaps, alighting on the wire of a 
broken fence. 

In the warm kitchen, where I dawdle over 
my breakfast, the widowed bantam-hen has 
perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is 
needless to go through the form of opening the 
school to-day; for, with the exception of Was- 
ter Lunny’s girl, I have had no scholars for 
nine days. Yesterday she announced that 
there would be no more schooling till it was 
fresh, “as she wasna cornin’;” and indeed, 
though the smoke from the farm chimneys is 
a pretty prospect for a snowed-up school-mas- 
ter, the trudge between the two houses must 
be weary work for a bairn. As for the other 
children, who have to come from all parts of 
the hills and glen, I may not see them for 
weeks. Last year the school was practically 
deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, 
with the March examinations staring me in the 


10 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I 
wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day 
digging myself out of the school-house with the 
spade I now keep for the purpose in my bed- 
room. 

The kail grows brittle from the snow in my 
dank and cheerless garden. A crust of bread 
gathers timid pheasants round me. The rob- 
ins, I see, have made the coal-house their home. 
Waster Lunny’s dog never barks without rous- 
ing my sluggish cat to a joyful response. It 
is Dutch courage with the birds and beasts of 
the glen, hard driven for food; but I look at- 
tentively for them in these long forenoons, and 
they have begun to regard me as one of them- 
selves. My breath freezes, despite my pipe, 
as I peer from the door ; and with a fortnight- 
old newspaper I retire to the ingle-nook. The 
friendliest thing I have seen to-day is the well- 
smoked ham suspended from my kitchen raft- 
ers. It was a gift from the farm of Tullin, 
with a load of peats, the day before the snow 
began to fall. I doubt if I have seen a cart 


since. 


THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. 


11 


This afternoon I was the not altogether pas- 
sive spectator of a curious scene in natural his- 
tory. My feet encased in stout “tackety” 
boots, I had waded down two of Waster Lun- 
ny’s fields to the glen burn: in summer the 
never-failing larder from which, with wrig- 
gling worm or garish fly, I can any morning 
whip a savory breakfast ; in the winter time 
the only thing in the valley that defies the ice- 
king’s chloroform. I watched the water twist- 
ing black and solemn through the snow, the 
ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness 
of the struggle with the frost, from which it 
has, after all, crept only half victorious. A 
bare wild rose-bush on the farther bank was 
violently agitated, and then there ran from its 
root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was 
the general effect. I was not less interested 
when my startled eyes divided this phenome- 
non into its component parts, and recognized in 
the disturbance on the opposite bank only an- 
other fierce struggle among the hungry ani- 
mals for existence : they need no professor to 
teach them the doctrine of the survival of the 


12 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


fittest. A weasel had gripped a water-hen 
(whit-rit and beltie they are called in these 
parts) cowering at the root of the rose-bush, 
and was being dragged down the bank by the 
terrified bird, which made for the water as its 
only chance of escape. In less disadvantage- 
ous circumstances the weasel would have made 
short work of his victim ; but as he only had 
the bird by the tail, the prospects of the coim 
batants were equalized. It was the tug-of-war 
being played with a life as the stakes. “If I 
do not reach the water,” was the argument 
that went on in the heaving little breast of the 
one, “ I am a dead bird.” “ If this water-hen,” 
reasoned the other, “reaches the burn, my sup- 
per vanishes with her.” Down the sloping 
bank the hen had distinctly the best of it, but 
after that came a yard of level snow, and here 
she tugged and screamed in vain. I had so 
far been an unobserved spectator ; but my sym- 
pathies were with the beltie, and, thinking it 
high time to interfere, I jumped into the wa- 
ter. The water-hen gave one mighty final tug 
and toppled into the burn; while the weasel 


THE SCHOOL- HOUSE. 


13 


viciously showed me his teeth, and then stole 
slowly up the hank to the rose-bush, whence, 
“girning,” he watched me lift his exhausted 
victim from the water, and set off with her for 
the school-house. Except for her draggled 
tail, she already looks wonderfully composed, 
and so long as the frost holds I shall have little 
difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sun- 
day I found a frozen sparrow, whose heart 
had almost ceased to beat, in the disused pig- 
sty, and put him for warmth into my breast- 
pocket. The ungrateful little scrub bolted 
without a word of thanks about ten minutes 
afterward, to the alarm of my cat, which had 
not known his whereabouts. 

I am alone in the school-house. On just such 
an evening as this last year my desolation drove 
me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed 
for the night. The recollection decides me to 
court my own warm hearth, to challenge my 
right hand again to a game at the “dambrod ” 
against my left. I do not lock the school- 
house door at nights ; for even a highwayman 
(there is no such luck) would be received with 


14 


AULD LICHT IDYLS . 


open arms, and I doubt if there be a barred 
door in all the glen. But it is cosier to put on 
the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost it- 
self miles down the valley. I wonder what 
they are doing out in the world. Though I 
am the Free Church precentor in Thrums (ten 
pounds a year, and the little town is five miles 
away) , they have not seen me for three weeks. 
A packman whom I thawed yesterday at my 
kitchen fire tells me that last Sabbath only 
the Auld Lichts held service. Other people 
realized that they were snowed up. Far up 
the glen, after it twists out of view, a manse 
and half a dozen thatched cottages that are 
there may still show a candle-light, and the 
crumbling gravestones keep cold vigil round 
the gray old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into 
the sky to the north. A flake trembles against 
the window ; but it is too cold for much snow 
to-night. The shutter bars the outer world 
from the school -house. 


CHAPTER II. 

THRUMS. 

Thrums is the name I give here to the hand- 
ful of houses jumbled together in a cup, 
which is the town nearest the school-house. 
Until twenty years ago its every other room, 
earthen-floored and showing the rafters over- 
head, had a hand -loom, and hundreds of weav- 
ers lived and died Thoreaus “ben the hoose ” 
without knowing it. In those days the cup 
overflowed and left several houses on the top 
of the hill, where their cold skeletons still 
stand. The road that climbs from the square, 
which is Thrums’ heart, to the north is so steep 
and straight, that in a sharp frost children 
hunker at the top and are blown down with a 
roar and a rush on rails of ice. At such times, 
when viewed from the cemetery where the 

traveller from the school-house gets his first 
15 


16 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


glimpse of the little town, Thrums is but two 
church-steeples and a dozen red-stone patches 
standing out of a snow-heap. One of the 
steeples belongs to the new Free Kirk, and the 
other to the parish church, both of which the 
first Auld Licht minister I knew ran past when 
he had not time to avoid them by taking a 
back wynd. He was but a pocket edition of a 
man, who grew two inches after he was called ; 
but he was so full of the cure of souls, that he 
usually scudded to it with his coat-tails quar- 
relling behind him. His successor, whom I 
knew better, was a greater scholar, and said, 
“ Let us see what this is in the original Greek,” 
as an ordinary man might invite a friend to 
dinner ; but he never wrestled as Mr. Dishart, 
his successor, did with the pulpit cushions, nor 
flung himself at the pulpit door. Nor was he 
so “hard on the Book,” hs Lang Tammas, the 
precentor, expressed it, meaning that he did 
not bang the Bible with his fist as much as 
might have been wished. 

Thrums had been known to me for years be- 
fore I succeeded the captious dominie at the 


THRUMS. 


17 


school-house in the glen. The dear old soul 
who originally induced me to enter the Auld 
Licht kirk by lamenting the “want of Christ ” 
in the minister’s discourses was my first land- 
lady. For the last ten years of her life she 
was bedridden, and only her interest in the 
kirk kept her alive. Her case against the min- 
ister was that he did not call to denounce her 
sufficiently often for her sins, her pleasure be- 
ing to hear him bewailing her on his knees as 
one who was probably past praying for. She 
was as sweet and pure a woman as I ever knew, 
and had her wishes been horses, she would 
have sold them and kept (and looked after) a 
minister herself. 

There are few Auld Licht communities in 
Scotland nowadays — perhaps because people 
are now so well off, for the most devout Auld 
Lichts were always poor, and their last years 
were generally a grim struggle with the work- 
house. Many a heavy-eyed, back-bent weaver 
has won his Waterloo in Thrums fighting on 
his stumps. There are a score or two of them 

left still, for, though there are now two fac- 
2 


18 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


tories in the town, the clatter of the hand-loom 
can yet be heard, and they have been starving 
themselves of late until they have saved up 
enough money to get another minister. 

The square is packed away in the centre 
of Thrums, and irregularly built little houses 
squeeze close to it like chickens clustering 
round a hen. Once the Auld Lichts held prop- 
erty in the square, but other denominations 
have bought them out of it, and now few of 
them are even to be found in the main streets 
that make for the rim of the cup. They live 
in the kirk wynd, or in retiring little houses, 
the builder of which does not seem to have 
remembered that it is a good plan to have a 
road leading to houses until after they were 
finished. Narrow paths straggling round gar- 
dens, some of them with stunted gates, which 
it is commoner to step over than to open, have 
been formed to reach these dwellings, but in 
winter they are running streams, and then 
the best way to reach a house such as that 
of Tammy Mealmaker the wright, pronounced 
wir-icht, is over a broken dyke and a pig-sty. 


THRUMS. 


19 


Tammy, who died a bachelor, had been soured 
in his youth by a disappointment in love, of 
which he spoke but seldom. She lived far 
away in a town which he had wandered in 
the days when his blood ran hot, and they 
became engaged. Unfortunately, however, 
Tammy forgot her name, and he never knew 
the address ; so there the affair ended, to his 
silent grief. He admitted himself, over his 
snuff-mull of an evening, that he was a very 
ordinary character, but a certain halo of hor- 
ror was cast over the whole family by their 
connection with little Joey Sutie, who was 
pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whis- 
tled when he went past the minister. Joey 
became a pedler, and was found dead one 
raw morning dangling over a high wall within 
a few miles of Thrums. When climbing the 
dyke his pack had slipped back, the strap 
round his neck, and choked him. 

You could generally tell an Auld Licht in 
Thrums when you passed him, his dull, vacant 
face wrinkled over a heavy wob. He wore 
tags of yarn round his trousers beneath the 


20 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


knee, that looked like ostentatious garters, and 
frequently his jacket of corduroy was put on 
beneath his waistcoat. If he was too old to 
carry his load on his back, he wheeled it on a 
creaking barrow, and when he met a friend- 
they said, “Ay, Jeames,” and “Ay, Davit,” 
and then could think of nothing else. At long 
intervals they passed through the square, dis- 
appearing or coming into sight round the town- 
house which stands on the south side of it, 
and guards the entrance to a steep brae that 
leads down and then twists up on its lonely 
way to the county town. I like to linger over 
the square, for it was from an upper window 
in it that I got to know Thrums. On Satur- 
day nights, when the Auld Licht young men 
came into the square dressed and washed to 
look at the young women errand-going, and 
to laugh some time afterward to each other, it 
presented a glare of light ; and here even came 
’ the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and 
the showman, who, besides playing “The 
Mountain Maid and the Shepherd’s Bride,” 
exhibited part of the tail of Balaam’s ass, the 


THRUMS. 


21 


helm of Noah’s ark, and the tartan plaid in 
which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Char- 
lie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle 
Kitty’s wax- work, whose motto was, “A rag 
to pay, and in you go,” were given in a hall 
whose approach was by an outside stair. On 
the Muckle Friday, the fair for which children 
storing their pocket-money would accumulate 
sevenpence halfpenny in less than six months, 
the square was crammed with gingerbread 
stalls, bag-pipers, tiddlers, and monstrosities 
who were gifted with second-sight. There 
was a bearded man, who had neither legs nor 
arms, and was drawn through the streets in a 
small cart by four dogs. By looking at you 
he could see all the clock-work inside, as could 
a boy who was led about by his mother at the 
end of a string. Every Friday there was the 
market, when a dozen ramshackle carts con- 
taining vegetables and cheap crockery tilled 
the centre of the square, resting in line on their 
shafts. A score of farmers’ wives or daugh- 
ters in old-world garments squatted against 
the town- house within walls of butter on cab- 


22 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


bage-leaves, eggs and chickens. Toward even- 
ing the voice of the buckie-man shook the 
square, and rival fish-cadgers, terrible charac- 
ters who ran races on horseback, screamed libels 
at each other over a fruiterer’s barrow. Then 
it was time for douce Auld Lichts to go home, 
draw their stools near the fire, spread their red 
handkerchiefs over their legs to prevent their 
trousers getting singed, and read their “Pil- 
grim’s Progress.” 

In my school -house, however, I seem to see 
the square most readily in the Scotch mist 
which so often filled it, loosening the stones 
and choking the drains. There was then no 
rattle of rain against my window-sill, nor 
dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but 
blobs of water grew on the panes of glass to 
reel heavily down them. Then the sodden 
square would have shed abundant tears- if you 
could have taken it in your hands and wrung 
it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the 
square would be empty but for one vegetable- 
cart left in the care of a lean collie, which, tied 
to the wheel, whined and shivered underneath. 


THRUMS. 


23 


Pools of water gather in the coarse sacks that 
have been spread over the potatoes and bun- 
dles of greens, which turn to manure in their 
lidless barrels. The eyes of the whimpering 
dog never leave a black close over which hangs 
the sign of the Bull, probably the refuge of 
the hawker. At long intervals a farmer’s gig 
rumbles over the humpy, ill-paved square, or 
a native, with his head buried in his coat, 
peeps out of doors, skurries across the way, 
and vanishes. Most of the leading shops are 
here, and the decorous draper ventures a few 
yards from the pavement to scan the sky, or 
note the effect of his new arrangement in 
scarves. Planted against his door is the 
butcher, Henders Todd, white-aproned, and 
with a knife in his hand, gazing interestedly 
at the draper, for a mere man may look at an 
elder. The tinsmith brings out his steps, and, 
mounting them, stealthily removes the sauce- 
pans and pepper-pots that dangle on a wire 
above his sign-board. Pulling to his door he 
shuts out the foggy light that showed in his 
solder-strewn workshop. The square is de- 


24 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


serted again. A bundle of sloppy parsley slips 
from the hawker’s cart and topples over the 
wheel in driblets. The puddles in the sacks 
overflow and run together. The dog has 
twisted his chain round a barrel and yelps 
sharply. As if in response comes a rush of 
other dogs. A terrified fox-terrier tears across 
the square with half a score of mongrels, the 
butcher’s mastiff, and some collies at his heels; 
he is doubtless a stranger, who has insulted 
them by his glossy coat. For two seconds the 
square shakes to an invasion of dogs, and then 
again there is only one dog in sight. 

No one will admit the Scotch mist. It “ looks 
saft. ” The tinsmith “ wudna wonder but what 
it was makkin’ for rain.” Tammas Haggart 
and Pete Lunan. dander into sight bareheaded, 
and have to stretch out their hands to discover 
what the weather is like. By-and-bye they 
come to a standstill to discuss the immor- 
tality of the soul, and then they are looking 
silently at the Bull. Neither speaks, but they 
begin to move toward the inn at the same 
time, and its door closes on them before they 


THRUMS. 


25 


know what they are doing. A few minutes 
afterward Jinny Dundas, who is Pete’s wife, 
runs straight for the Bull in her short gown, 
which is tucked up very high, and emerges 
with her husband soon afterward. Jinny is 
voluble, but Pete says nothing. Tammas 
follows later, putting his head out at the door 
first, and looking cautiously about him to see 
if any one is in sight. Pete is a U. P., and 
may he left to his fate, hut the Auld Licht 
minister thinks that, though it he hard work, 
Tammas is worth saving. 

To the Auld Licht of the past there were 
three degrees of damnation — auld kirk, play- 
acting, chapel. Chapel was the name always 
given to the English Church, of which I am 
too much an Auld Licht myself to care to 
write even now. To belong to the chapel was, 
in Thrums, to he a Roman Catholic, and the 
boy who flung a clod of earth at the English 
minister — who called the Sabbath Sunday — or 
dropped a “divet” down his chimney was held 
to be in the right way. The only pleasant 
story Thrums could tell of the chapel was that 


26 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


its steeple once fell. It is surprising that an 
English church was ever suffered to be built in 
such a place ; though probably the county gen- 
try had something to do with it. They trav- 
elled about too much to be good men. Small 
though Thrums used to be, it had four kirks 
in all before the disruption, and then another, 
which split into two immediately afterward. 
The spire of the parish church, known as the 
auld kirk, commands a view of the square, 
from which the entrance to the kirk -yard would 
be visible, if it were not hidden by the town • 
house. The kirk-yard has long been crammed, 
and is not now in use, but the church is suffi- 
ciently large to hold nearly all the congregations 
in Thrums. Just at the gate lived Pete Todd, 
the father of Sam’l, a man of whom the Auld 
Lichts had reason to be proud. Pete was an 
every-day man at ordinary times, and was even 
said, when his wife, who had been long ill, 
died, to have clasped his hands and exclaimed, 
“Hip, hip, hurrah!” adding only as an after- 
thought, “The Lord’s will be done.” But 
midsummer was his great opportunity. Then 


THRUMS. 


27 


took place the rouping of the seats in the par- 
ish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and 
the seats being put up to auction were knocked 
down to the highest bidder. This sometimes 
led to the breaking of the peace. Every person 
was present who was at all particular as to 
where he sat, and an auctioneer was engaged 
for the day. He rouped the kirk-seats like 
potato-drills, beginning by asking for a bid. 
Every seat was put up to auction separately ; 
for some were much more run after than others, 
and the men were instructed by their wives 
what to bid for. Often the women joined in, 
and as they bid excitedly against each other 
the church rang with opprobrious epithets. A 
man would come to the roup late, and learn 
that the seat he wanted had been knocked 
down. He maintained that he had been un- 
fairly treated, or denounced the local laird to 
whom the seat-rents went. If he did not get 
the seat he would leave the kirk. Then the 
woman who had forestalled him wanted to 
know what he meant by glaring at her so, and 
the auction was interrupted. Another mem- 


28 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


ber would “thrip down the throat” of the auc- 
tioneer that he had a right to his former seat 
if he continued to pay the same price for it. 
The auctioneer was screamed at for favoring 
his friends, and at times the roup became so 
noisy that men and women had to be forcibly 
ejected. Then was Pete’s chance. Hovering 
at the gate, he caught the angry people on 
their way home and took them into his work- 
shop by an outside stair. There he assisted 
them in denouncing the parish kirk, with the 
view of getting them to forswear it. Pete 
made a good many Auld Lichts in his time 
out of unpromising material. 

Sights were to be witnessed in the parish 
church at times that could not have been made 
more impressive by the Auld Lichts them- 
selves. Here sinful women were grimly taken 
to task by the minister, who, having thun- 
dered for a time against adultery in general, 
called upon one sinner in particular to stand 
forth. She had to step forward into a pew 
near the pulpit, where, alone and friendless, 
and stared at by the congregation, she cowered 


THRUMS. 


29 


in tears beneath his denunciations. In that 
seat she had to remain during the forenoon 
service. She returned home alone, and had to 
come back alone to her solitary seat in the 
afternoon. All day no one dared speak to her. 
She was as much an object of contumely as 
the thieves and smugglers who, in the end of 
last century, it was the privilege of Feudal 
Bailie Wood (as he was called) to whip round 
the square. 

It is nearly twenty years since the gardeners 
had their last “walk” in Thrums, and they 
survived all the other benefit societies that 
walked once every summer. There was a 
“weavers’ walk ’’and five or six others, the 
“women’s walk ” being the most picturesque. 
These were processions of the members of ben- 
efit societies through the square and wynds, 
and all the women walked in white, to the 
number of a hundred or more, behind the Tillie- 
drum band, Thrums having in those days no 
band of its own. 

From the northwest corner of the square a 
narrow street sets off, jerking this way and 


30 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


that, as if uncertain what point to make for. 
Here lurks the post-office, which had once the 
reputation of being as crooked in its ways as 
the street itself. 

A railway line runs into Thrums now. The 
sensational days of the post-office were when 
the letters were conveyed officially in a creak- 
ing .old cart from Tilliedrum. The “pony” 
had seen better days than the cart, and always 
looked as if he were just on the point of suc- 
ceeding in running away from it. Hooky 
Crewe was driver — so called because an iron 
hook was his substitute for a right arm. Rob- 
bie Proctor, the blacksmith, made the hook 
and fixed it in. Crewe suffered from rheuma- 
tism, and when he felt it coming on he stayed 
at home. Sometimes his cart came undone in 
a snow-drift; when Hooky, extricated from 
the fragments by some chance wayfarer, was 
deposited with his mail-bag (of which he al- 
ways kept a grip by the hook) in a farmhouse. 
It was his boast that his letters always reached 
their destination eventually. They might be 
a long time about it, but “slow and sure ” was 


THRUMS. 


31 


bis motto. Hooky emphasized his “ slow and 
sure” by taking a snuff. He was a godsend 
to the postmistress, for to his failings or the 
infirmities of his gig were charged all delays. 

At the time I write of, the posting of the 
letter took as long and was as serious an un- 
dertaking as the writing. That means a good 
deal, for many of the letters were, written to 
dictation by the Thrums school-master, Mr. 
Fleemister, who belonged to the Auld Kirk. 
He was one of the few persons in the commun- 
ity who looked upon the despatch of his letters 
by the post-mistress as his right, and not a 
favor on her part ; there was a long-standing 
feud between them accordingly. After a few 
tumblers of Widow Stables’ treacle-heer — in 
the concoction of which she was the acknowl- 
edged mistress for miles around — the school- 
master would sometimes go the length of hint- 
ing that he could get the post-mistress dismissed 
any day. This mighty power seemed to rest 
on a knowledge of “ steamed” letters. Thrums 
had a high respect for the school-master; hut 
among themselves the weavers agreed that, 


32 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


even if he did write to the Government, Lizzie 
Harrison, the post-mistress, would refuse to 
transmit the letter. The more shrewd ones 
among us kept friends with both parties ; for, 
unless you could write “writ-hand,” you could 
not compose a letter without the school-mas- 
ter’s assistance ; and, unless Lizzie was so cour- 
teous as to send it to its destination, it might 
lie — or so it was thought — much too long in 
the box. A letter addressed by the school- 
master found great disfavor in Lizzie’s eyes. 
You might explain to her that you had merely 
called in his assistance because you were a poor 
hand at writing yourself, but that was held no 
excuse. Some addressed their own envelopes 
with much labor, and sought to palm off the 
whole as their handiwork. It reflects on the 
post-mistress somewhat that she had generally 
found them out by next day, when, if in a 
specially vixenish mood, she did not hesitate 
to upbraid them for their perfidy. 

To post a letter you did not merely saunter 
to the post-office and drop it into the box. The 
cautious correspondent first went into the shop 


THRUMS. 


and explained to Lizzie how matters stood. 
She kept what she called a bookseller’s shop 
as well as the post-office; hut the supply of 
books corresponded exactly to the lack of de- 
mand for them, and her chief trade was in 
nick-nacks, from marbles and money-boxes up 
to concertinas. If he found the post-mistress 
in an amiable mood, which was only now and 
then, the caller led up craftily to the object of 
his visit. Having discussed the weather and 
the potato-disease, he explained that his sister 
Mary, whom Lizzie would remember, had mar- 
ried a fishmonger in Dundee. The fishmon- 
ger had lately started on himself and was 
doing well. They had four children. The 
youngest had had a severe attack of measles. 
No news had been got of Mary for twelve 
months ; and Annie, his other sister, who lived 
in Thrums, had been at him of late for not 
writing. So he had written a few lines ; and, 
in fact, he had the letter with him. The letter 
was then produced, and examined by the post- 
mistress. If the address was in the school- 
master’s handwriting, she professed her in- 
3 


34 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


ability to read it. Was this a t or an l or an 
if was that a b or a d? This was a cruel re- 
venge on Lizzie’s part ; for the sender of the 
letter was completely at her mercy. The 
school-master’s name being tabooed in her 
presence, he was unable to explain that the 
writing was not his own ; and as for deciding 
between the Z’s and Z’s, he could not do it. 
Eventually he would be directed to put the let- 
ter into the box. They would do their best 
with it, Lizzie said, but in a voice that sug- 
gested how little hope she had of her efforts 
to decipher it proving successful. 

There was an opinion among some of the 
people that the letter should not be stamped 
by the sender. The proper thing to do was to 
drop a penny for the stamp into the box along 
with the letter, and then Lizzie would see that 
it was all right. Lizzie’s acquaintance with 
the handwriting of every person in the place 
who could write gave her a great advantage. 
You would perhaps drop into her shop some 
day to make a purchase, when she would calm- 
ly produce a letter you had posted several 


THRUMS. 


35 


days before. In explanation she would tell you 
that you had not put a stamp on it, or that 
she suspected there was money in it, or that 
you had addressed it to the wrong place. I 
remember an old man, a relative of my own, 
who happened for once in his life to have 
several letters to post at one time. The cir- 
cumstance was so out of the common that he 
considered it only reasonable to make Lizzie a 
small present. 

Perhaps the post-mistress was belied ; but if 
sho did not “steam” the letters and confide 
their titbits to favored friends of her own sex, 
it is difficult to see how all the gossip got out. 
The school-master once played an unmanly 
trick on her, with the view of catching her in 
the act. He was a bachelor who had long been 
given up by all the maids in the town. One 
day, however, he wrote a letter to an imagi- 
nary lady in the county-town, asking her to be 
his, and going into full particulars about his 
income, his age, and his prospects. A male 
friend in the secret, at the other end, was to 
reply, in a lady’s handwriting, accepting him, 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


and also giving personal particulars. The 
first letter was written ; and an answer arrived 
in due course — two days, the school-master said, 
after date. No other person knew of this 
scheme for the undoing of the post-mistress, 
yet in a very short time the school-master’s 
coming marriage was the talk of Thrums. 
Everybody became suddenly aware of the lady’s 
name, of her abode, and of the sum of money 
she was to bring her husband. It was even 
noised abroad that the school-master had re- 
presented his age as a good ten years less than 
it was. Then the school-master divulged 
everything. To his mortification, he was not 
quite believed. All the proof he could bring 
forward to support his story was this: that 
time would show whether he got married or 
not. Foolish man ! this argument was met by 
another, which was accepted at once. The lady 
had jilted the school-master. Whether this 
explanation came from the post-office, who 
shall say? But so long as he lived the school- 
master was twitted about the lady who threw 
him over. He took his revenge in two ways. 


THRUMS. 


37 


He wrote and posted letters exceedingly abu- 
sive of the post-mistress. The matter might be 
libellous ; but then, as he pointed out, she would 
incriminate herself if she “ brought him up” 
about it. Probably Lizzie felt his other insult 
more. By publishing his suspicions of her on 
every possible occasion he got a few people to 
seal their letters. So bitter was his feeling 
against her that he was even willing to supply 
the wax. 

They know all about post-offices in Thrums 
now, and even jeer at the telegraph -boy’s uni- 
form. In the old days they gathered round 
him when he was seen in the street, and es- 
corted him to his destination in triumph. That, 
too, was after Lizzie had gone the way of all 
the earth. But perhaps they are not even yet 
as knowing as they think themselves. I was 
told the other day that one of them took out a 
postal order, meaning to send the money to a 
relative, and kept the order as a receipt. 

I have said that the town is sometimes full 
of snow. One frosty Saturday, seven years 
ago, I trudged into it from the school-house, 


38 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


and on the Monday morning we could not see 
Thrums anywhere. 

I was in one of the proud two-storied houses 
in the place, and could have shaken hands with 
my friends without from the upper windows. 
To get out of doors you had to walk upstairs. 
The outlook was a sea of snow fading into 
white hills and sky, with the quarry standing 
out red and ragged to the right like a rock in 
the ocean. The Auld Licht manse was gone, 
but had left its garden-trees behind, their lean 
branches soft with snow. Roofs were humps 
in the white blanket. The spire of the Estab- 
lished Kirk stood up cold and stiff, like a mon- 
ument to the buried inhabitants. 

Those of the natives who had taken the pre- 
caution of conveying spades into their houses 
the night before, which is my plan at the 
school-house, dug themselves out. They hob- 
bled cautiously over the snow, sometimes sink- 
ing into it to their knees, when they stood 
still and slowly took in the situation. It had 
been snowing more or less for a week, but in a 
commonplace kind of way, and they had gone 


THRUMS. 


39 


to bed thinking all was well. This night the 
snow must have fallen as if the heavens had 
opened up, determined to shake themselves 
free of it for ever. 

The man who first came to himself and saw 
what was to be done was young Henders Ram- 
say. Henders had no fixed occupation, being 
but an “orra man” about the place, and the 
best thing known of him is that his mother’s 
sister was a Baptist. He feared God, man, 
nor the minister ; and all the learning he had 
was obtained from assiduous study of a gro- 
cer’s window. But for one brief day he had 
things his own way in the town, or, speaking 
strictly, on the top of it. With a spade, a 
broom, and a pickaxe, which sat lightly on his 
broad shoulders (he was not even back-bent, 
and that showed him no respectable weaver), 
Henders delved his way to the nearest house, 
which formed one of a row, and addressed the 
inmates down the chimney. They had already 
been clearing it at the other end, or his words 
would have been choked. “ You’re snawed up, 
Davit,” cried Henders, in a voice that was en- 


40 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


tirely business-like; “hae ye a spade?” A 
conversation ensued up and down this unusual 
channel of communication. The unlucky 
householder, taking no thought of the morrow, 
was without a spade. But if Henders would 
clear away the snow from his door he would 
be “varra obleeged.” Henders, however, had 
to come to terms first. “ The chairge is sax- 
pence, Davit,” he shouted. Then a haggling 
ensued. Henders must be neighborly. A 
plate of broth, now — or, say, twopence. But 
Henders was obdurate. “I’se nae time to 
argy-bargy wi’ ye, Davit. Gin ye’re no willin’ 
to say saxpence, I’m aff to Will’um Pyatt’s. 
He’s buried too.” So the victim had to make 
up his mind to one of two things: he must 
either say saxpence or remain where he was. 

If Henders was “promised,” he took good 
care that no snowed-up inhabitant should per- 
jure himself. He made his way to a window 
first, and, clearing the snow from the top of 
it, pointed out that he could not conscientiously 
proceed further until the debt had been paid. 
“Money doon,” he cried, as soon as he reached 


THRUMS . 


41 


a pane of glass; or, “Come awa wi’ my sax- 
pence noo.” 

The belief that this day had not come to 
Henders unexpectedly was borne out by the 
method of the crafty callant. His charges 
varied from sixpence to half-a-crown, accord- 
ing to the wealth and status of his victims ; and 
when, later on, there were rivals in the snow, 
he had the discrimination to reduce his mini- 
mum fee to threepence. He had the honor of 
digging out three ministers at one shilling, one 
and threepence, and two shillings respectively. 

Half a dozen times within the next fortnight 
the town was re-buried in snow. This gener- 
ally happened in the night-time ; but the in- 
habitants were not to be caught unprepared 
again. Spades stood ready to their hands in 
the morning, and they fought their way above 
ground without Henders Ramsay’s assistance. 
To clear the snow from the narrow wynds and 
pends, however, was a task not to be at- 
tempted ; and the Auld Lichts, at least, rested 
content when enough light got into their 
workshops to let them see where their looms 


42 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 

stood. Wading through beds of snow they 
did not much mind; but they wondered what 
would happen to their houses when the thaw 
came. 

The thaw was slow in coming. Snow dur- 
ing the night and several degrees of frost by 
day were what Thrums began to accept as a 
revised order of nature. Vainly the Thrums 
doctor, whose practice extends into the glens, 
made repeated attempts to reach his distant 
patients, twice driving so far into the dreary 
waste that he could neither go on nor turn 
back. A ploughman who contrived to gallop 
ten miles for him did not get home for a week. 
Between the town, which is nowadays an ag- 
ricultural centre of some importance, and the 
outlying farms communication was cut off for 
a month; and I heard subsequently of one 
farmer who did not see a human being, uncon- 
nected with his own farm, for seven weeks. 
The school-house, which I managed to reach 
only two days behind time, was closed for a 
fortnight, and even in Thrums there was only a 
sprinkling of scholars. 


THRUMS. 


43 


On Sundays the feeling between the differ- 
ent denominations ran high, and the middling 
good folk who did not go to church counted 
those who did. In the Established Church 
there was a sparse gathering, who waited in 
vain for the minister. After a time it got 
abroad that a flag of distress was flying from 
the manse, and then they saw that the minis- 
ter was storm-stayed. An office-bearer offered 
to conduct service; but the others present 
thought they had done their duty and went 
home. The U. P. bell did not ring at all, and 
the kirk-gates were not opened. The Free Kirk 
did bravely, however. The attendance in the 
forenoon amounted to seven, including the 
minister; hut in the afternoon there was a 
turn-out of upward of fifty. How much de- 
nominational competition had to do with this, 
none can say; but the general opinion was 
that this muster to afternoon service was a 
piece of vainglory. Next Sunday all the 
kirks were on their mettle, and, though the 
snow was drifting the whole day, services were 
general. It was felt that after the action of 


44 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


the Free Kirk the Established and the U. P. ’s 
must show what they too were capable of. 
So, when the bells rang at eleven o’clock and 
two, church-goers began to pour out of every 
close. If I remember aright, the victory lay 
with the U. P.’s by two women and a boy. 
Of course the Auld Lichts mustered in as great 
force as ever. The other kirks never dreamed 
of competing with them. What was regarded 
as a judgment on the Free Kirk for its boast- 
fulness of spirit on the preceding Sunday hap- 
pened during the forenoon. While the service 
was taking place a huge clod of snow slipped 
from the roof and fell right against the church 
door. It was some time before the prisoners 
could make up their minds to leave by the 
windows. What the Auld Lichts would have 
done in a similar predicament I cannot even 
conjecture. 

That was the first warning of the thaw. It 
froze again ; there was more snow ; the thaw 
began in earnest ; and then the streets were a 
sight to see. There was no traffic to turn the 
snow to slush, and, where it had not been 


THRUMS. 


45 


piled up in walls a few feet from the houses, 
it remained in the narrow ways till it became 
a lake. It tried to escape through doorways, 
when it sank slowly into the floors. Gentle 
breezes created a ripple on its surface, and 
strong winds lifted it into the air and flung it 
against the houses. It undermined the heaps 
of clotted snow till they tottered like icebergs 
and fell to pieces. Men made their way 
through it on stilts. Had a frost followed, 
the result would have been appalling; but 
there was no more frost that winter. A fort- 
night passed before the place looked itself 
again, and even then congealed snow stood 
doggedly in the streets, while the country roads 
were like newly ploughed fields after rain. 
The heat from large fires soon penetrated 
through roofs of slate and thatch ; and it was 
quite a common thing for a man to he flattened 
to the ground by a slithering of snow from 
above just as he opened his door. But it had 
seldom more than ten feet to fall. Most inter- 
esting of all was the novel sensation experi- 
enced as Thrums began to assume its familiar 


46 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


aspect, and objects so long buried that they 
had been half forgotten came back to view and 
use. 

Storm-stead shows used to emphasize the 
severity of a Thrums winter. As the name 
indicates, these were gatherings of travelling 
booths in the winter-time. Half a century ago 
the country was overrun by itinerant show- 
men, who went their different ways in sum- 
mer, but formed little colonies in the cold 
weather, when they pitched their tents in any 
empty field or disused quarry, and huddled 
together for the sake of warmth, not that they 
got much of it. Not more than five winters 
ago we had a storm-stead show on a small 
scale; but nowadays the farmers are less will- 
ing to give these wanderers a camping-place, 
and the people are less easily drawn to the 
entertainments provided, by fife and drum. 
The colony hung together until it was starved 
out, when it trailed itself elsewhere. I have 
often seen it forming. The first arrival 
would be what was popularly known as “ Sam’l 
Mann’s Tumbling-Booth,” with its tumblers, 


THRUMS. 


47 


jugglers, sword-swallowers, and balancers. 
This travelling show visited us regularly twice 
a year : once in summer for the Muckle Fri- 
day, when the performers were gay and stout, 
and even the horses had flesh on their bones ; 
and again in the “back-end ” of the year, when 
cold and hunger had taken the blood from 
their faces, and the scraggy dogs that whined 
at their side were lashed for licking the paint 
off the caravans. While the storm-stead show 
was in the vicinity the villages suffered from 
an invasion of these dogs. Nothing told more 
truly the dreadful tale of the showman’s life in 
winter. Sam’l Mann’s was a big show, and 
half a dozen smaller ones, most of which were 
familiar to us, crawled in its wake. Others 
heard of its whereabouts and came in from 
distant parts. There was the well-known Gub- 
bins with his “A’ the. World in a Box,” a 
halfpenny peep-show, in which all the world 
was represented by Joseph and his Brethren 
(with pit and coat), the bombardment of Co- 
penhagen, the Battle of the Nile, Daniel in the 
Den of Lions, and Mount Etna in eruption. 


48 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“ Aunty Maggy’s Whirligig ” could be enjoyed 
on payment of an old pair of boots, a collection 
of rags, or the like. Besides these and other 
shows, there were the wandering minstrels, 
most of whom were “ Waterloo veterans” want- 
ing arms or a leg. I remember one whose 
arms had been “ smashed by a thunderbolt at 
Jamaica.” Queer, bent old dames, who super- 
intended “ lucky bags ” or told fortunes, sup- 
plied the uncanny element, but hesitated to 
call themselves witches, for there can still be 
seen near Thrums the pool where these unfort- 
unates used to be drowned, and in the session 
book of the Glen Quharity kirk can be read 
an old minute announcing that on a certain 
Sabbath there was no preaching because “ the 
minister was away at the burning of a witch.” 
To the storm-stead shows came the gypsies in 
great numbers. Claypots (which is a corrup- 
tion of Claypits) was their headquarters near 
Thrums, and it is still sacred to their memory. 
It was a clachan of* miserable little huts built 
entirely of clay from the dreary and sticky pit in 
which they had been flung together. A shape- 


THRUMS. 


49 


less hole on one side was the doorway, and a 
little hole, stuffed with straw in winter, the 
window. Some of the remnants of these hov- 
els still stand. Their occupants, though they 
went by the name of gypsies among them- 
selves, were known to the weavers as the Clay- 
pots beggars; and their King was Jimmy 
Pawse. His regal dignity gave Jimmy the 
right to seek alms first when he chose to do so ; 
thus he got the cream of a place before his 
subjects set to work. He was rather foppish 
in his dress ; generally affecting a suit of gray 
cloth with showy metal buttons on it, and a 
broad blue bonnet. His wife was a little body 
like himself ; and when they went a-begging, 
Jimmy with a meal-bag for alms on his hack, 
she always took her husband’s arm. Jimmy 
was the legal adviser of his subjects; his de- 
cision was considered final on all questions, and 
he guided them in their courtships as well as 
on their death-beds. He christened their 
children and officiated at their weddings, mar- 
rying them over the tongs. 

The storm-stead show attracted old and 
4 


50 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


young — to looking on from the outside. In 
the day-time the wagons and tents presented 
a dreary appearance, sunk in snow, the dogs 
shivering between the wheels, and but little 
other sign of life visible. When dusk came 
the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer 
from the booth of tumblers were sent into the 
town to entice an audience. They marched 
quickly through the nipping, windy streets, 
and then returned with two or three score of 
men, women, and children, plunging through 
the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was 
Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a 
mockery the glare of the lamps and the capers 
of the mountebanks were, and how satisfied 
were we to enjoy it all without going inside. 
I hear the “Waterloo veterans” still, and re- 
member their patriotic outbursts : 

On the sixteenth day of June, brave boys, while cannon 
loud did roar, 

We being short of cavalry they pressed on us full sore ; 
But British steel soon made them yield, though our 
numbers was but few, 

And death or victory was the word on the plains of 
Waterloo. 


THRUMS. 


51 


The storm-stead shows often found it easier 
to sink to rest in a field than to leave it. 
For weeks at a time they were snowed up, 
sufficiently to prevent any one from Thrums 
going near them, though not sufficiently to 
keep the pallid mummers indoors. That 
would in many cases have meant star- 
vation. They managed to fight their way 
through storm and snowdrift to the high road 
and thence to the town, where they got meal 
and sometimes broth. The tumblers and jug- 
glers used occasionally to hire an out-house in 
the town at these times — you may be sure they 
did not pay for it in advance — and give per- 
formances there. It is a curious thing, but 
true, that our herd -boys and others were some- 
times struck with the stage-fever. Thrums 
lost boys to the show-men even in winter. 

* On the whole, the farmers and the people 
generally were wonderfully long-suffering with 
these wanderers, who I believe were more hon- 
est than was to be expected. They stole, cer- 
tainly; but seldom did they steal anything 
more valuable than turnips. Sam’l Mann him- 


52 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


self flushed proudly over the effect his show 
once had on an irate farmer. The farmer ap- 
peared in the encampment, whip in hand and 
furious. They must get off his land before 
nightfall. The crafty showman, however, pre- 
vailed upon him to take a look at the acrobats, 
and he enjoyed the performance so much that 
he offered to let them stay until the end of the 
week. Before that time came there was such 
a fall of snow that departure was out of the 
question ; and it is to the farmer’s credit that 
he sent Sam’l a hag of meal to tide him and 
his actors over the storm. 

There were times when the showmen made a 
tour of the bothies, where they slung their 
poles and ropes and gave their poor perform- 
ances to audiences that were not critical. The 
bothy being strictly the “man’s ” castle, the 
farmer never interfered ; indeed, he was some- 
times glad to see the show. Every other 
weaver in Thrums used to have a son a plough- 
man, and it was the men from the bothies who 
filled the square on the muckly. “ Hands ” are 
not huddled together nowadays in squalid 


THRUMS. 


53 


barns more like cattle than men and women, 
but bothies in the neighborhood of Thrums are 
not yet things of the past. Many a ploughman 
delves his way to and from them still in all 
weathers, when the snow is on the ground ; at 
the time of “hairst,” and when the turnip 
“shaws” have just forced themselves through 
the earth, looking like straight rows of green 
needles. Here is a picture of a bothy of to-day 
that I visited recently. Over the door there is 
a waterspout that has given way, and as I en- 
tered I got a rush of rain down my neck. The 
passage was so small that one could easily have 
stepped from the doorway on to the ladder 
standing against the wall, which was there in 
lieu of a staircase. “ Upstairs ” was a mere 
garret, where a man could not stand erect even 
in the centre. It was entered by a square hole 
in the ceiling, at present closed by a clap-door 
in no wa y dissimilar to the trap-doors on a 
theatre stage. I climbed into this garret, 
which is at present used as a store-room for 
agricultural odds and ends. At harvest-time, 
however, it is inhabited — full to overflowing. 


54 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


A few decades ago as many as fifty laborers 
engaged for the harvest had to be housed in the 
farm out-houses on beds of straw. There was 
no help for it, and men and women had to con- 
gregate in these barns together. Up as early 
as five in the morning, they were generally 
dead tired by night; and, miserable though 
this system of herding them together was, they 
took it like stoics, and their very number 
served as a moral safeguard. Nowadays the 
harvest is gathered in so quickly , and machin- 
ery does so much that used to be done by hand, 
that this crowding of laborers together, which 
was the bothy system at its worst, is nothing 
like what it was. As many as six or eight 
men, however, are put up in the garret re- 
ferred to during “hairst ’’-time, and the female 
laborers have to make the best of it in the 
barn. There is no doubt that on many farms 
the two sexes have still at this busy time to 
herd together even at night. 

The bothy was but scantily furnished, though 
it consisted of two rooms. In the one, which 
was used almost solely as a sleeping apartment, 


THRUMS. 


55 


there was no furniture to speak of, beyond two 
closet beds, and its bumpy earthen floor gave 
it a cheerless look. The other, which had a 
single bed, was floored with wood. It was not 
badly lit by two very small windows that faced 
each other, and, besides several stools, there 
was a long form against one of the walls. A 
bright fire of peat and coal — nothing in the 
world makes such a cheerful red fire as this 
combination — burned beneath a big kettle 
(“ boiler” they called it), and there was a 
“ press” or cupboard containing a fair assort- 
ment of cooking utensils. Of these some be- 
longed to the bothy, while others were the 
private property of the tenants. A tin “ pan ” 
and “pitcher” of water stood near the door, 
and the table in the middle of the room was 
covered with pilcloth. 

Four men and a boy inhabited this bothy, 
and the rain had driven them, all indoors. In 
better weather the}^ spend the leisure of the 
evening at the game of quoits, which is the 
standard pastime among Scottish ploughmen. 
They fish the neighboring streams, too, and 


56 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


have burn-trout for supper several times a 
week. When I entered, two of them were sit- 
ting by the fire playing draughts, or, as they 
called it, “the dam-brod.” The dam-brod is 
the Scottish laborer’s billiards; and he often 
attains to a remarkable proficiency at the 
game. Wylie, the champion draught-player, 
was once a herd-boy; and wonderful stories 
are current in all bothies of the times when 
his master called him into the farm-parlor to 
show his skill. A third man, who seemed the 
elder by quite twenty years, was at the win- 
dow reading a newspaper ; and I got no shock 
when I saw that it was the Saturday Review, 
which he and a laborer on an adjoining farm 
took in weekly between them. There was a 
copy of a local newspaper — the People's Jour- 
nal — also lying about, and some hooks, includ- 
ing one of Darwin’s. These were all the 
property of this man, however, who did the 
reading for the bothy. 

They did all the cooking for themselves, liv- 
ing largely on milk. In the old days, which 
the senior could remember, porridge was so 


THRUMS. 


57 


universally the morning meal that they called 
it by that name instead of breakfast. They 
still breakfast on porridge, but often take tea 
“ above it.” Generally milk is taken with the 
porridge; but “ porter” or stout in a bowl is 
no uncommon substitute. Potatoes at twelve 
o’clock — seldom “brose” nowadays — are the 
staple dinner dish, and the tinned meats have 
become very popular. There are bothies where 
each man makes his own food ; but of course 
the more satisfactory plan is for them to club 
together. Sometimes they get their food in 
the farm-kitchen ; but this is only when there 
are few of them and the farmer and his family 
do not think it beneath them to dine with the 
men. Broth, too, may be made in the kitchen 
and sent down to the bothy. At harvest time 
the workers take their food in the fields, when 
great quantities of milk are provided. There 
is very little beer drunk, and whiskey is only 
consumed in privacy. 

Life in the bothies is not, I should say, so 
lonely as life at the school-house, for the hands 
have at least each other’s company. The 


58 


AVLD LIGHT IDYLS. 


hawker visits them frequently still, though 
the itinerant tailor, once a familiar figure, has 
almost vanished. Their great place of con- 
gregating is still some country smiddy, which 
is also their frequent meeting-place when bent 
on black-fishing. The flare of the black-fisher’s 
torch still attracts salmon to their death in the 
rivers near Thrums ; and you may hear in the 
glens on a dark night the rattle of the spears 
on the wet stones. Twenty or thirty years 
ago, however, the sport was much more com- 
mon. After the farmer had gone to bed, some 
half-dozen ploughmen and a few other poach- 
ers from Thrums would set out for the meeting- 
place. 

The smithy on these occasions must have 
been a weird sight ; though one did not mark 
that at the time. The poacher crept from the 
darkness into the glaring smithy light ; for in 
country parts the anvil might sometimes be 
heard clanging at all hcurs of the night. As 
a rule, every face was blackened ; and it was 
this, I suppose, rather than the fact that dark 
nights were chosen, that gave the gangs the 


THRUMS. 


59 


name of black-fishers. Other disguises were 
resorted to; one of the commonest being to 
change clothes or to turn your corduroys out- 
side in. The country-folk of those days were 
more superstitious than they are now, and it 
did not take much to turn the black-fishers 
back. There was not a barn or byre in the 
district that had not its horseshoe over the 
door. Another popular' device for frightening 
away witches and fairies was to hang bunches 
of garlic about the farms. I have known a 
black-fishing expedition stopped because a “ yel- 
low yite,” or yellow-hammer, hovered round 
ther gang when they were setting out. Still 
more ominous was the “ peat” when it appeared 
with one or three companions. An old rhyme 
about this bird runs — “ One is joy, two is grief, 
three’s a bridal, four is death.” Such snatches 
of superstition are still to be heard amidst the 
gossip of a north-country smithy. 

Each black-fisher brought his own spear 
and torch, both more or less home-made. The 
spears were in many cases “ gully-knives, ” fas- 
tened to staves with twine and resin, called 


60 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


“rozet.” The torches were very rough-and- 
ready things — rope and tar, or even rotten roots 
dug from broken trees — in fact, anything that 
would flare. The black-fishers seldom jour- 
neyed far from home, confining themselves to 
the rivers within a radius of three or four 
miles. There were many reasons for this : one 
of them being that the hands had to be at their 
work on the farm by five o’clock in the morn- 
ing: another, that so they poached and let 
poach. Except when in spate, the river I 
specially refer to offered no attractions to the 
black-fishers. Heavy rains, however, swell it 
much more quickly than most rivers into a 
turbulent rush of water ; the part of it affected 
by the black-fishers being banked in with rocks 
that prevent the water’s spreading. Above 
these rocks, again, are heavy green banks, 
from which stunted trees grow aslant across 
the river. The effect is fearsome at some 
points where the trees run into each other, as 
it were, from opposite banks. However, the 
black-fishers thought nothing of these things. 
They took a turnip lantern with them — that is, 


THRUMS. 


61 


a lantern hollowed out of a turnip, with a 
piece of candle inside — but no lights were 
shown on the road. Every one knew his way 
to the river blindfold ; so that the darker the 
night the better. On reaching the water there 
was a pause. One or two of the gang climbed 
the banks to discover if any bailiffs were on the 
watch; while the others sat down, and with 
the help of the turnip lantern “busked” their 
spears ; in other words, fastened on the steel — 
or, it might be, merely pieces of rusty iron 
sharpened into a point at home — to the staves. 
Some had them busked before they set out, but 
that was not considered prudent ; for of course 
there was always a risk of meeting spoil-sports 
on the way, to whom the spears would tell a 
tale that could not be learned from ordinary 
staves. Nevertheless little time was lost. 
Five or six of the gang waded into the water, 
torch in one hand and spear in the other ; and 
the object now was to catch some salmon with 
the least possible delay, and hurry away. 
Windy nights were good for the sport, and I 
can still see the river lit up with the lumps of 


62 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


light that a torch makes in a high wind. The 
torches, of course, were used to attract the fish, 
which came swimming to the sheen, and were 
then speared. As little noise as possible was 
made; but though the men bit their lips in- 
stead of crying out when they missed their fish, 
there was a continuous ring of their weapons 
on the stones, and every irrepressible impreca- 
tion was echoed up and down the black glen. 
Two or three of the gang were told off to land 
the salmon, and they had to work smartly and 
deftly. They kept by the side of the spears- 
man, and the moment he struck a fish they 
grabbed at it with their hands. When the 
spear had a barb there was less chance of the 
fish’s being lost; but often this was not the 
case, and probably not more than two-thirds 
of the salmon speared were got safely to the 
bank. The takes of course varied ; sometimes, 
indeed, the black-fishers returned home empty- 
handed. 

Encounters with the bailiffs were not infre- 
quent, though they seldom took place at the 
water’s edge. When the poachers were caught 


THRUMS. 


63 


in the act, and had their blood up with the ex- 
citement of the sport, they were ugly custom- 
ers. Spears were used and heads were broken. 
Struggles even took place in the water, when 
there was always a chance of somebody’s being 
drowned. Where the bailiffs gave the black- 
fishers an opportunity of escaping without a 
fight it was nearly always taken; the booty 
being left behind. As a rule, when the “wa- 
ter watchers,” as the bailiffs were sometimes 
called, had an inkling of what was to take 
place, they reinforced themselves with a con- 
stable or two and waited on the road to catch 
the poachers on their way home. One black- 
fisher, a noted character, was nicknamed the 
“ Deil o’ Glen Quharity. ” He was said to have 
gone to the houses of the bailiffs and offered 
to sell them the fish stolen from the streams 
over which they kept guard. The “Deil” 
was never imprisoned — partly, perhaps, because 
he was too eccentric to be taken seriously. 


CHAPTEE III. 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 

One Sabbath day in the beginning of the 
century the Auld Licht minister at Thrums 
walked out of his battered, ramshackle, earth - 
en-floored kirk with a following and never re- 
turned. The last words he uttered in it were : 
“Follow me to the common ty, all you persons 
who want to hear the Word of God properly 
preached; and James Duphie and his two sons 
will answer for this on the Day of Judgment.” 
The congregation, which belonged to the body 
who seceded from the Established Church a 
hundred and fifty years ago, had split, and as 
the New Lights (now the U. P. ’s) were in the 
majority, the Old Lights, with the minister at 
their head, had to retire to the common ty (or 
common) and hold service in the open air until 

they had saved up money for a church. They 
64 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 


65 


kept possession, however, of the white manse 
among the trees. Their kirk has but a cluster 
of members now, most of them old and done, 
but each is equal to a dozen ordinary church- 
goers, and there have been men and women 
among them on whom memory loves to linger. 
For forty years they have been dying out, but 
their cold, stiff pews still echo the Psalms of 
David, and the Auld Licht kirk will remain 
open so long as it has one member and a min- 
ister. 

The church stands round the corner from 
the square, with only a large door to distin- 
guish it from the other buildings in the short 
street. Children who want to do a brave thing 
hit this door with their fists, when there is no 
one near, and then run away scared. The 
door, however, is sacred to the memory of a 
white-haired old lady who, not so long ago, 
used to march out of the kirk and remain on 
the pavement until the psalm which had just 
been given out was sung. Of Thrums’ pave- 
ment it may here be said that when you come, 

even to this day, to a level slab you will feel re- 
5 


66 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


luctant to leave it. The old lady was Mistress 
(which is Miss) Tibbie McQuhatty, and she 
nearly split the Auld Licht kirk over “run 
line.” This conspicuous innovation was intro- 
duced by Mr. Dishart, the minister, when he 
was young and audacious. The old, reverent 
custom in the kirk was for the precentor to 
read out the psalm a line at a time. Having 
then sung that line he read out the next one, 
led the singing of it, and so worked his way 
on to line three. Where run line holds, how- 
ever, the psalms is read out first, and forth- 
with sung. This is not only a flighty way of 
doing things, which may lead to greater scan- 
dals, but has its practical disadvantages, for 
the precentor always starts singing in advance 
of the congregation (Auld Lichts never being 
able to begin to do anything all at once), and, 
increasing the distance with every line, leaves 
them hopelessly behind at the finish. Miss 
McQuhatty protested against this change, as 
meeting the devil half way, but the minister 
carried his point, and ever after that she rushed 
ostentatiously from the church the moment a 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


67 


psalm was given out, and remained behind the 
door until the singing was finished, when she 
returned, with a rustle, to her seat. Run line 
had on her the effect of the reading of the Riot 
Act. Once some men, capable of anything, 
held the door from the outside, and the con- 
gregation heard Tibbie rampaging in the pas- 
sage. Bursting into the kirk she called the 
office-bearers to her assistance, whereupon the 
minister in miniature raised his voice and de- 
manded the why and wherefore of the ungodly 
disturbance. Great was the hubbub, but the 
door was fast, and a compromise had to be 
arrived at. The old lady consented for once 
to stand in the passage, but not without press- 
ing her hands to her ears. You may smile at 
Tibbie, but ah! I know what she was at a 
sick bedside. I have seen her when the hard 
look had gone from her eyes, and it would ill 
become me to smile too. 

As with all the churches in Thrums, care 
had been taken to make the Auld Licht one 
much too large. The stair to the “laft” or 
gallery, which was originally -little more than 


68 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


a ladder, is ready for you as soon as you enter 
the doorway, but it is best to sit in the body 
of the kirk. The plate for collections is inside 
the church, so that the whole congregation can 
give a guess at what you give. If it is some- 
thing very stingy or very liberal, all Thrums 
knows of it within a few hours ; indeed, this 
holds good of all the churches, especially per- 
haps of the Free one, which has been called 
the bawbee kirk, because so many halfpen- 
nies find their way into the plate. On Satur- 
day nights the Thrums shops are besieged for 
coppers by housewives of all denominations, 
who would as soon think of dropping a three- 
penny bit into the plate as of giving nothing. 
Tammy Todd had a curious way of tipping his 
penny into the Auld Licht plate while still 
keeping his hand to his side. He did it much 
as a boy fires a marble, and there was quite a 
talk in the congregation the first time he 
missed. A devout plan was to carry your 
penny in your hand all the way to church, but 
to appear to take it out of your pocket on enter- 
ing, and some plumped it down noisily like 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


men paying their way. I believe old Snecky 
Hobart, who was a canty stock but obstinate, 
once dropped a penny into the plate and took 
out a halfpenny as change, but the only un- 
toward thing that happened to the plate was 
once when the lassie from the farm of Curly 
Bog capsized it in passing. Mr. Dishart, who 
was always a ready man, introduced some- 
thing into his sermon that day about women’s 
dress, which every one hoped Christy Lundy, 
the lassie in question, would remember. Never- 
theless, the minister sometimes came to a sud- 
den stop himself when passing from the vestry 
to the pulpit. The passage being narrow, his 
rigging would catch in a pew as he sailed down 
the aisle. Even then, however, Mr. Dishart 
remembered that he was not as' other men. 

White is not a religious color, and the walls 
of the kirk were of a dull gray. A cushion 
was allowed to the manse pew, but merely as 
a symbol of office, and this w~as the only pew 
in the church that had a door. It was and is 
the pew nearest to the pulpit on the minister’s 
right, and one day it contained a bonnet, 


70 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


which Mr. Dishart’s predecessor preached at 
for one hour and ten minutes. From the pul- 
pit, which w*as swaddled in black, the minister 
had a fine sweep of all the congregation except 
those in the back pews downstairs, who were 
lost in the shadow of the laft. Here sat 
Whinny Webster, so called because, having an 
inexplicable passion against them, he devoted 
his life to th e extermination of whins. Whinny 
for years ate peppermint lozenges with impu- 
nity in his back seat, safe in the certainty that 
the minister, however much he might try, 
could not possibly see him. But his day 
came. One afternoon the kirk smelt of pepper- 
mints, and Mr. Dishart could rebuke no one, 
for the defaulter was not in sight. Whinny’s 
cheek was working up and down in quiet en- 
joyment of its lozenge, when he started, notic- 
ing that the preaching had stopped. Then he 
heard a sepulchral voice say “ Charles Web- 
ster ! ” Whinny’s eyes turned to the pulpit, 
only part of which was visible to him, and to 
his horror they encountered the minister’s head 
coming down the stairs. This took place after 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 71 

I had ceased to attend the Auld Licht kirk 
regularly ; but I am told that as Whinny gave 
one wild scream the peppermint dropped from 
his mouth. The minister had got him by lean- 
ing over the pulpit door until, had he given 
himself only another inch, his feet would have 
gone into the air. As for Whinny he became 
a God-fearing man. 

The most uncanny thing about the kirk 
was the precentor’s box beneath the pulpit. 
Three Auld Licht ministers I have known, but 
I can only conceive one precentor. Lang Tarn- 
mas’ box was much too small for him. Since 
his disappearance from Thrums I believe they 
have paid him the compliment of enlarging it 
for a smaller man, no doubt with the feeling that 
Tammas alone could look like a Christian in it. 
Like the whole congregation, of course, he had 
to stand during the prayers — the first of which 
averaged half an hour in length. If he stood 
erect his head and shoulders vanished beneath 
funereal trappings, when he seemed decap- 
itated, and if he stretched his neck the pulpit 
tottered. He looked like the pillar on which 


72 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


it rested, or he balanced it on his head like a 
baker’s tray. Sometimes he leaned forward 
as reverently as he could, and then, with his 
long, lean arms dangling over the side of his 
box, he might have been a suit of “blacks” 
hung up to dry. Once I was talking with 
Cree Queery in a sober, respectable manner, 
when all at once a light broke out on his face. 
I asked him what he was laughing at, and he 
said it was at Lang Tammas. He got grave 
again when I asked him what there was in 
Lang Tammas to smile at, and admitted that 
he could not tell me. However, I have always 
been of opinion that the thought of the pre- 
centor in his box gave Cree a fleeting sense of 
humor. 

Tammas and Hendry Munn were the two 
paid officials of the church, Hendry being kirk- 
officer ; but poverty was among the few points 
they had in common. The precentor was a 
cobbler, though he never knew it, shoemaker 
being the name in those parts, and his dwell- 
ing-room was also his workshop. There he sat 
in his “brot,” or apron, from early morning to 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 


73 


far on to midnight, and contrived to make his 
six or eight shillings a week. I have often 
sat with him in the darkness that his “ cruizey” 
lamp could not pierce, while his mutterings to 
himself of “ay, ay, yes, umpha, oh ay, ay 
man, ” came as regularly and monotonously as 
the tick of his “ wag-at-the-wa clock. Hen- 
dry and he were paid no fixed sum for their 
services in the Auld Licht kirk, but once a 
year there was a collection for each of them, 
and so they jogged along. Though not the 
only kirk-officer of my time Hendry made the 
most lasting impression. He was, I think, the 
only man in Thrums who did not quake when 
the minister looked at him. A wild story, 
never authenticated, says that Hendry once 
offered Mr. Dishart a snuff from his mull. In 
the streets Lang Tammas was more stern and 
dreaded by evil-doers, hut Hendry had first 
place in the kirk. One of his duties was to 
precede the minister from the session-house to 
the pulpit and open the door for him. Having 
shut Mr. Dishart in he strolled away to his 
seat. When a strange minister preached, Hen- 


74 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


dry was, if possible, still more at his ease. 
This will not be believed, but I have seen him 
give the pulpit-door on these occasions a fling 
to with his feet. However ill an ordinary 
member of the congregation might become in 
the kirk he sat on till the service ended, but 
Hendry would wander to the door and shut it 
if he noticed that the wind was playing irrev- 
erent tricks with the pages of Bibles, and proof 
could still be brought forward that he would 
stop deliberately in the aisle to lift up a piece 
of paper, say, that had floated there. After 
the first psalm had been sung it was Hendry’s 
part to lift up the plate and carry its tinkling 
contents to the session-house. On the great- 
est occasions he remained so calm, so indiffer- 
ent, so expressionless, that he might have been 
present the night before at a rehearsal. 

When there was preaching at night the 
church was lit by tallow candles, which also 
gave out all the artificial heat provided. Two 
candles stood on each side of the pulpit, and 
others were scattered over the church, some of 
them fixed into holes on rough brackets, and 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 75 

some merely sticking in their own grease on the 
pews. Hendry superintended the lighting of 
the candles, and frequently hobbled through 
the church to snuff them. Mr. Dishart was a 
man who could do anything except snuff a 
candle, but when he stopped in his sermon to 
do that he as often as not knocked the candle 
over. In vain he sought to refix it in its proper 
place, and then all eyes turned to Hendry. As 
coolly as though he were in a public hall or 
place of entertainment, the kirk-officer arose 
and, mounting the stair, took the candle from 
the minister’s reluctant hands and put it right. 
Then he returned to his seat, not apparently 
puffed up, yet perhaps satisfied with himself ; 
while Mr. Dishart, glaring after him to see if 
he was carrying his head high, resumed his 
wordy way. 

Never was there a man more uncomfortably 
loved than Mr. Dishart. Easie Haggart, his 
maid-servant, reproved him at the breakfast 
table. Lang* Tammas and SamT Mealmaker 
crouched for five successive Sabbath nights on 
his manse-wall to catch him smoking (and got 


76 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


him). Old wives grumbled by their hearths 
when he did not look in to despair of their sal- 
vation. He told the maidens of his congrega- 
tion not to make an idol of him. His session 
saw him (from behind a haystack) in conversa- 
tion with a strange woman, and asked grimly 
if he remembered that he had a wife. Twenty 
were his years when he came to Thrums, and 
on the very first Sabbath he knocked a board 
out of the pulpit. Before beginning his trial 
sermon he handed down the big Bible to the 
precentor, to give his arms free swing. The 
congregation, trembling with exhilaration, 
probed his meaning. Not a square inch of 
paper, they saw, could be concealed there. 
Mr. Dishart had scarcely any hope for the Auld 
Lichts ; he had none for any other denomina- 
tion. Davit Lunan got behind his handker- 
chief to think for a moment, and the minister 
was on him like a tiger. The call was unani- 
mous. Davit proposed him. 

Every few years, as one might say, the Auld 
Licht kirk gave way and buried its minister. 
The congregation turned their empty pockets 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


77 


inside out, and the minister departed in a farm- 
er’s cart. The scene was not an amusing one 
to those who looked on at it. To the Auld Lichts 
was then the humiliation of seeing their pulpit 
“supplied ” on alternate Sabbaths by itinerant 
probationers or stickit ministers. When they 
were not starving themselves to support a pas- 
tor the Auld Lichts were saving up for a sti- 
pend. They retired with compressed lips to 
their looms, and weaved and weaved till they 
weaved another minister. Without the grief 
of parting with one minister there could not 
have been the transport of choosing another. 
To have had a pastor always might have made 
them vain-glorious. 

They were seldom longer than twelve months 
in making a selection, and in their haste they 
would have passed over Mr. Dishart and mated 
with a monster. Many years have elapsed 
since Providence flung Mr. Watts out of the 
Auld Licht kirk. Mr. Watts was a proba- 
tioner who was tried before Mr. Dishart, and, 
though not so young as might have been 
wished, he found favor in many eyes. “ Slug- 


78 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


gard in the laft, awake!” he cried to Bell 
Whamond, who had forgotten herself, and it 
was felt that there must be good stuff in him. 
A breeze from Heaven exposed him on Com- 
munion Sabbath. 

On the evening of this solemn day the door 
of the Auld Licht kirk was sometimes locked, 
and the congregation repaired, Bible in hand, 
to the commonty. They had a right to this 
common on the Communion Sabbath, hut only 
took advantage of it when it was believed that 
more persons intended witnessing the evening 
service than the kirk would hold. On this day 
the attendance was always very great. 

It was the Covenanters come back to life. 
To the summit of the slope a wooden box was 
slowly hurled by Hendry Munn and others, and 
round this the congregation quietly grouped to 
the tinkle of the cracked Auld Licht bell. 
With slow, majestic tread the session advanced 
upon the steep common with the little minister 
in their midst. He had the people in his 
hands now, and the more he squeezed them 
the better they were pleased. The travelling 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


79 


pulpit consisted of two compartments, the one 
for the minister and the other for Lang Tarn- 
mas, but no Auld Licht thought that it looked 
like a Punch and Judy puppet show. This ser- 
vice on the common was known as the “tent 
preaching,” owing to a tent’s being frequently 
used instead of the box. 

Mr. Watts was conducting the service on 
the commonty. It was a fine, still summer 
evening, and loud above the whisper of the 
burn from which the common climbs, and the 
labored “pechs” of the listeners, rose the 
preacher’s voice. The Auld Lichts in their 
rusty blacks (they must have been a more ar- 
tistic sight in the olden days of blue bonnets 
and knee-breeches) nodded their heads in sharp 
approval, for though they could swoop down 
on a heretic like an eagle on carrion, they 
scented no prey. Even Lang Tammas, on 
whose nose a drop of water gathered when he 
was in his greatest fettle, thought that all was 
fair and above-board. Suddenly a rush of 
wind tore up the common, and ran straight at 
the pulpit. It formed in a sieve, and passed 


80 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


over the heads of the congregation, who felt it 
as a fan, and looked up in awe. Lang Tam- 
mas, feeling himself all at once grow clammy, 
distinctly heard the leaves of the pulpit Bible 
shiver. Mr. Watts’ hands, outstretched to 
prevent a catastrophe, were blown against his 
side, and then some twenty sheets of closely 
written paper floated into the air. There was 
a horrible, dead silence. The burn was roaring 
now. The minister, if such he can be called, 
shrank back in his box, and as if they had seen 
it printed in letters of fire on the heavens, the 
congregation realized that Mr. Watts, whom 
they had been on the point of calling, read his 
sermon. He wrote it out on pages the exact size 
of those in the Bible, and did not scruple to 
fasten these into the Holy Book itself. At 
theatres a sullen thunder of angry voices be- 
hind the scene represents a crowd in a rage, 
and such a low, long-drawn howl swept the 
common when Mr. Watts was found out. To 
follow a pastor who “ read ” seemed to the Auld 
Lichts like claiming heaven on false pretences. 
In ten minutes the session alone, with Lang 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


81 


Tammas and Hendry, were on the common. 
They were watched by many from afar off, 
and (when one comes to think of it now) looked 
a little curious jumping, like trout at flies, at 
the damning papers still fluttering in the air. 
The minister was never seen in our parts again, 
but he is still remembered as “ Paper Watts.” 

Mr. Dishart in the pulpit was the reward of 
his upbringing. At ten he had entered the 
university. Before he was in his teens he was 
practising the art of gesticulation in his 
father’s gallery pew. From distant congre- 
gations people came to marvel at him. He 
was never more than comparatively young. 
So long as the pulpit trappings of the kirk at 
Thrums lasted he could be seen, once he was 
fairly under way with his sermon, but dimly 
in a cloud of dust. He introduced headaches. 
In a grand transport of enthusiasm he once 
flung his arms over the pulpit and caught 
Lang Tammas on the forehead. Leaning for- 
ward, with his chest on the cushions, he would 
pommel the Evil One with both hands, and 

then, whirling round to the left, shake his fist 
6 


82 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


at Bell Whamond’s neckerchief. With a sud- 
den jump he would fix Pete Todd’s youngest 
hoy catching flies at the laft window. Stiffen- 
ing unexpectedly, he would leap three times in 
the air, and then gather himself in a corner 
for a fearsome spring. When he wept he 
seemed to be laughing, and he laughed in a 
paroxysm of tears. He tried to tear the devil 
out of the pulpit rails. When he was not a 
teetotum he was a windmill. His pump po- 
sition was the most appalling. Then he glared 
motionless at his admiring listeners, as if he 
had fallen into a trance with his arm upraised. 
The hurricane broke next moment. Nanny 
Sutie bore up under the shadow of the wind- 
mill — which would have been heavier had Auld 
Licht ministers worn gowns — but the pump 
affected her to tears. She was stone-deaf. 

For the first year or more of his ministry an 
Auld Licht minister was a mouse among cats. 
Both in the pulpit and out of it they watched 
for unsound doctrine, and when he strayed they 
took him by the neck. Mr. Dishart, however, 
had been brought up in the true way, and sel- 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


83 


dom gave his people a chance. In time, it 
may be said, they .grew despondent, and set- 
tled in their uncomfortable pews with all sus- 
picion of lurking heresy allayed. It was only 
on such Sabbaths as Mr. Dish art changed pul- 
pits with another minister that they cocked 
their ears and leaned forward eagerly to snap 
the preacher up. 

Mr. Dishart had his trials. There was the 
split in the kirk, too, that comes once at least 
to every Auld Licht minister. He was long 
in marrying. The congregation were thinking 
of approaching him, ‘through the medium of 
his servant, Easie Haggart, on the subject of 
matrimony; for a bachelor coming on for 
twenty- two, with an income of eighty pounds 
per annum, seemed an anomaly: — when one day 
he took the canal for Edinburgh and returned 
with his bride. His people nodded their heads, 
but said nothing to the minister. If he did 
not choose to take them into his confidence, it 
Was no affair of theirs. That there was some- 
thing queer about the marriage, however, 
seemed certain. Sandy Whamond, who was 


A ULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


S4 

a soured man after losing his eldership, said 
that he believed she had boon an “Englishy” 
— in other words, had belonged to the English 
Church; but it is not probable that Mr. Dis- 
hart would have gone the length of that. The 
secret is buried in his grave. 

Easie Haggart jagged the minister sorely. 
She grew loquacious with years, and when he 
had company would stand at the door joining 
in the conversation. If the company was an- 
other minister, she would take a chair and dis- 
cuss Mr. Dishart’s infirmities with him. The 
Auld Lichts loved their minister, but they saw 
even more clearly than himself the necessity 
for his humiliation. His wife made all her 
children’s clothes, but Sanders Gow complained 
that she looked too like their sister. In one 
week three of the children died, and on the 
Sabbath following it rained. Mr. Dishart 
preached, twice breaking down altogether and 
gaping strangely round the kirk (there was 
no dust flying that day), and spoke of the rain 
as angels’ tears for three little girls. The 
Auld Lichts let it pass, but, as Lang Tammas 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK . 85 

said in private (for, of course, the thing was 
much discussed at the looms), if you material- 
ize angels in that way, where are you going to 
stop? 

It was on the fast-days that the Auld Licht 
kirk showed what it was capable of, and, so to 
speak, left all the other churches in Thrums 
far behind. The fast came round once every 
summer, beginning on a Thursday, when all 
the looms were hushed, and two services were 
held in the kirk of about three hours’ length 
each. A minister from another town assisted 
at these times, and when the service ended the 
members filed in at one door and out at an- 
other, passing on their way Mr. Dishart and 
his elders, who dispensed “ tokens” at the foot 
of the pulpit. Without a token, which was a 
metal lozenge, no one could take the sacra- 
ment on the coming Sabbath, and many a 
member has Mr. Dishart made miserable by 
refusing him his token for gathering wild- 
flowers, say, on a Lord’s Day (as testified to 
by another member). Women were lost who 
cooked dinners on the Sabbath, or took to col- 


86 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


ored ribbons, or absented themselves from 
church without sufficient cause. On the fast- 
day fists were shaken at Mr. Dish art as he 
walked sternly homeward, but he was undis- 
mayed. Next day there were no services in 
the kirk, for Auld Lichts could not afford many 
holidays, but they weaved solemnly, with Sat- 
urday and the Sabbath and Monday to think 
of. On Saturday service began at two and 
lasted until nearly seven. Two sermons were 
preached, but there was no interval. The sac- 
rament was dispensed on the Sabbath. Now- 
adays the “ tables” in the Auld Licht kirk are 
soon “ served, ” for the attendance has decayed, 
and most of the pews in the body of the church 
are made use of. In the days of which I 
speak, however, the front pews alone were 
hung with white, and it was in them only the 
sacrament was administered. As many mem- 
bers as could get into them delivered up their 
tokens and took the first table. Then they 
made room for others, who sat in their pews 
awaiting their turn. What with tables, the 
preaching, and unusually long prayers, the 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 


87 


service lasted from eleven to six. At half-past 
six a two hours’ service began, either in the 
kirk or on the common, from which no one who 
thought much about his immortal soul would 
have dared (or cared) to absent himself. A 
four hours’ service on the Monday, which, like 
that of the Saturday, consisted of two services 
in one, but began at eleven instead of two, 
completed the programme. 

On those days, if you were a poor creature 
and wanted to acknowledge it, you could 
leave the church for a few minutes and re- 
turn to it, but the creditable thing was to 
sit on. Even among the children there was 
a keen competition, fostered by their par- 
ents, to sit each other out, and be in at the 
death. 

The other Thrums kirks held the sacrament 
at the same time, but not with the same ve- 
hemence. As far north from the school-house 
as Thrums is south of it, nestles the little vil- 
lage of Quharity, and there the fast-day was 
not a day of fasting. In most cases the people 
had to go many miles to church. They drove 


88 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


or rode (two on a horse), or walked in from 
other glens. Without “the tents,” therefore, 
the congregation, with a long day before them, 
would have been badly off. Sometimes one 
tent sufficed; at other times rival publicans 
were on the ground. The tents were those in 
use at the feeing and other markets, and you 
could get anything inside them, from broth 
made in a “boiler” to the firiest whiskey. 
They were planted just outside the kirk-gate 
— long, low tents of dirty white canvas — so 
that when passing into the church or out of it 
you inhaled their odors. The congregation 
emerged austerely from the church, shaking 
their heads soleffinly over the minister’s re- 
marks, and their feet carried them into the 
tent. There was no mirth, no unseemly rev- 
elry, but there was a great deal of hard drink- 
ing. Eventually the tents were done away 
with, but not until the services on the fast- 
days were shortened. The Auld Licht minis- 
ters were the only ones who preached against 
the tents with any heart, and since the old 
dominie, my predecessor at the school-house, 


THE AULD LICHT KIRK. 


83 


died, there has not been an Auld Licht perma- 
nently resident in the glen of Quharity. 

Perhaps nothing took it out of the Auld 
Licht males so much as a christening. Then 
alone they showed symptoms of nervousness, 
more especially after the remarkable baptism 
of Eppie Whamond. I could tell of several 
scandals in connection with the kirk. There 
was, for instance, the time when Easie Hag- 
gart saved the minister. In a fit of temporary 
mental derangement the misguided man had 
one Sabbath day, despite the entreaties of his 
affrighted spouse, called at the post-office, and 
was on the point of reading the letter there re- 
ceived when Easie, who had slipped on her 
bonnet and followed him, snatched the secular 
thing from his hands. There was the story 
that ran like fire through Thrums and crushed 
an innocent man, to the effect that Pete Todd 
had been in an Edinburgh theatre countenanc- 
ing the play-actors. Something could he made, 
too, of the retribution that came to Charlie 
Ramsay, who woke in his pew to discover that 
its other occupant, his little son Jamie, was 


90 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


standing on the seat divesting himself of his 
clothes in presence of a horrified congregation. 
Jamie had begun stealthily, and had very little 
on when Charlie seized him. But having my 
choice of scandals I prefer the christening 
one — the unique case of Eppie Whamond, who 
was born late on Saturday night and baptized 
in the kirk on the following forenoon. 

To the casual observer the Auld Licht always 
looked as if he were returning from burying a 
near relative. Yet when I met him hobbling 
down the street, preternaturally grave and oc- 
cupied, experience taught me that he was pre- 
paring for a christening. How the minister 
would have borne himself in the event of a 
member of his congregation’s wanting the 
baptism to take place at home it is not easy 
to say ; but I shudder to think of the public 
prayers for the parents that would certainly 
have followed. The child was carried to the 
kirk through rain, or snow, or sleet, or wind; 
the father took his seat alone in the front pew, 
under the minister’s eye, and the service was 
prolonged far on into the afternoon. But 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


91 


though the references in the sermon to that 
unhappy object of interest in the front pew 
were many and pointed, his time had not really 
come until the minister signed to him to ad- 
vance as far as the second step of the pulpit, 
stairs. The nervous father clenched the rail- 
ing in a daze, and cowered before the minis- 
terial heckling. From warning the minister 
passed to exhortation, from exhortation to ad- 
monition, from admonition to searching ques- 
tioning, from questioning to prayer and wail- 
ing. When the father glanced up, there was 
the radiant boy in the pulpit looking as if he 
would like to jump down his throat. If he 
hung his head the minister would ask, with a 
groan, whether he was unprepared; and the 
whole congregation would sigh out the re- 
sponse that Mr. Dishart had hit it. When he 
replied audibly to the minister’s uncomfortable 
questions, a pained look at his flippancy trav- 
elled from the pulpit all round the pews ; and 
when he only bowed his head in answer, the 
minister paused sternly, and the congregation 
wondered what the man meant. Little won- 


92 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


der that Davie Haggart took to drinking when 
his turn came for occupying that front pew. 

If wee Eppie Whamond’s birth had been de- 
ferred until the beginning of the week, or hu- 
mility had shown more prominently among 
her mother’s virtues, the kirk would have been 
saved a painful scandal, and Sandy Whamond 
might have retained his eldership. Yet it was 
a foolish but wifely pride in her husband’s offi- 
cial position that turned Bell Dundas’ head — 
a wild ambition to heat all baptismal record. 

Among the wives she was esteemed a poor 
body whose infant did not see the inside of 
the kirk within a fortnight of its birth. Forty 
years ago it was an accepted superstition in 
Thrums that the ghosts of children who had 
died before they were baptized went wailing 
and wringing their hands round the kirk-yard 
at nights, and that they would continue to do 
this until the crack of doom. When the Auld 
Licht children grew up, too, they crowed over 
those of their fellows whose christening had 
been deferred until a comparatively late date, 
and the mothers who had needlessly missed a 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK . 


93 


Sabbath for long afterward hung their heads. 
That was a good and creditable birth which 
took place early in the week, thus allowing 
time for suitable christening preparations ; 
while to be born on a Friday or a Saturday was 
to humiliate your parents, besides being an 
extremely ominous beginning for yourself. 
Without seeking to vindicate Bell Dundas’ 
behavior, I may note, as an act of ordinary 
fairness, that, being the leading elder’s wife, 
she was sorely tempted. Eppie made her ap- 
pearance at 9 :45 on a Saturday night. 

In the hurry and skurry that ensued, Sandy 
escaped sadly to the square. His infant would 
be baptized eight days old — one of the longest 
deferred christenings of the year. Sandy was 
shivering under the clock when I met him ac- 
cidentally, and took him home. But by that 
time the harm had been done. Several of the 
congregation had been roused from their beds 
to hear his lamentations, of whom the men 
sympathized with him, while the wives tri- 
umphed austerely over Bell Dundas. As I 
wrung poor Sandy’s hand, I hardly noticed that 


94 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


a bright light showed distinctly between the 
shutters of his kitchen- window ; but the elder 
himself turned pale and breathed quickly. It 
was then fourteen minutes past twelve. 

My heart sank within me on the following 
forenoon, when Sandy Whamond walked, with 
a queer twitching face, into the front pew un- 
der a glare of eyes from the body of the kirk 
and the laft. An amazed buzz went round the 
church, followed by a pursing up of lips and 
hurried whisperings. Evidently Sandy had 
been driven to it against his own judgment. 
The scene is still vivid before me : the minister 
suspecting nc*guile, and omitting the admoni- 
tory stage out of compliment to the elder’s 
standing; Sandy’s ghastly face; the proud 
godmother (aged twelve) with the squalling 
baby in her arms ; the horror of the congrega- 
tion to a man and woman. A slate fell from 
Sandy’s house even as he held up the babe to 
the minister to receive a “droukin’ ” of water, 
and Eppie cried so vigorously that her shamed 
godmother had to rush with her to the vestry. 
Now things are not as they should be when an 


THE AULD LIGHT KIRK. 


95 


Auld Licht infant does not quietly sit out her 
first service. 

Bell tried for a time to carry her head high ; 
but Sandy ceased to whistle at his loom, and 
the scandal was a rolling stone that soon passed 
over him. Briefly it amounted to this: that 
a bairn born within two hours of midnight on 
Saturday could not have been ready for chris- 
tening at the kirk next day without the break- 
ing of the Sabbath. Had the secret of the 
nocturnal light been mine alone all might have 
been well; but Betsy Mund’s evidence was 
irrefutable. Great had been Bell’s cunning, 
but Betsy had outwitted her. Passing the 
house on the eventful night, Betsy had ob- 
served Marget Dundas, Bell’s sister, open the 
door and creep cautiously to the window, the 
chinks in the outside shutters of which she 
cunningly closed up with “ tow. ” As in a flash 
the disgusted Betsy saw what Bell was up to, 
and, removing the tow, planted herself behind 
the dilapidated dyke opposite and awaited 
events. Questioned at a special meeting of the 
office-bearers in the vestry, she admitted that 


96 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


the lamp was extinguished soon after twelve 
o’clock, though the fire burned brightly all 
night. There had been unnecessary feasting 
during the night, and six eggs were consumed 
before breakfast-time. Asked how she knew 
this, she admitted having counted the egg- 
shells that Marget had thrown out of doors in 
the morning. This, with the testimony of the 
persons from whom Sandy had sought condo- 
lence on the Saturday night, was the case for 
the prosecution. For the defence, Bell main- 
tained that all preparations stopped when the 
clock struck twelve, and even hinted that the 
bairn had been born on Saturday afternoon. 
But Sandy knew that he and his had got a 
fall. In the forenoon of the following Sabbath 
the minister preached from the text, “ Be sure 
your sin will find you out and in the after- 
noon from “Pride goeth before a fall.” He 
was grand. In the evening Sandy tendered his 
resignation of office, which was at once accept- 
ed. Wobs were behind-hand for a week, owing 
to the length of the prayers offered up for Bell ; 
and Lang Tammas ruled in Sandy’s stead. 


CHAPTER IV. 

LADS AND LASSES. 

With the severe Auld Lichts the Sabbath 
began at six o’clock on Saturday evening. By 
that time the gleaming shuttle was at rest, 
Davie Haggart had strolled into the village 
from his pile of stones in the Whunny road ; 
Hendry Robb, the “ dummy,” had sold his last 
barrowful of “rozetty (resiny) roots” for fire- 
wood ; and the people, having tranquilly supped 
and soused their faces in their water-pails, 
slowly donned their Sunday clothes. This cer- 
emony was common to all; but here diver- 
gence set in. The gray Auld Licht, to whom 
love was not even a name, sat in his high- 
backed arm-chair by the hearth, Bible or 
“ Pilgrim’s Progress” in hand, occasionally 
lapsing into slumber. But — though, when 

they got the chance, they went willingly three 
7 97 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


times to the kirk — there were young men in 
the community so flighty that, instead of doz- 
ing at home on Saturday night, they dandered 
casually into the square, and, forming into 
knots at the corners, talked solemnly and mys- 
teriously of women. 

Not even on the night preceding his wedding 
was an Auld Licht ever known to stay out 
after ten o’clock. So weekly conclaves at 
street-corners came to an end at a compara- 
tively early hour, one Ccelebs after another 
shuffling silently from the square until it 
echoed, deserted, to the town-house clock. 
The last of the gallants, gradually discovering 
that he was alone, would look around him mus- 
ingly, and, taking in the situation, slowly 
wend his way home. On no other night of the 
week was frivolous talk about the softer sex 
indulged in, the Auld Lichts being creatures 
of habit, who never thought of smiling on a 
Monday. Long before they reached their teens 
they were earning their keep as herds in the 
surrounding glens or filling “ pirns” for their 
parents ; but they were generally on the brink 


LADS AND LASSES. 


of twenty before they thought seriously of 
matrimony. Up to that time they only trifled 
with the other sex’s affections at a distance — 
filling a maid’s water-pails, perhaps, when no 
one was looking, or carrying her wob ; at the 
recollection of which they would slap their 
knees almost jovially on Saturday night. A 
wife was expected to assist at the loom as well 
as to be cunning in the making of marmalade 
and the firing of bannocks, and there was con- 
sequently some heartburning among the lads 
for maids of skill and muscle. The Auld Licht, 
however, who meant marriage seldom loitered 
in the streets. By-and-bye there came a time 
when the clock looked down through its cracked 
glass upon the hemmed -in square and saw him 
not. His companions, gazing at each other’s 
boots, felt that something was going on, but 
made no remark. 

A month ago, passing through the shabby, 
familiar square, I brushed against a withered 
old man tottering down the street under a load 
of yarn. It was piled on a wheelbarrow, 
which his feeble hands could not have raised 


100 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


but for the rope of yarn that supported it from 
his shoulders; and though Auld Licht was 
written on his patient eyes, I did not imme- 
diately recognize Jamie Whamond. Years 
ago Jamie was a sturdy weaver and fervent 
lover, whom I had the right to call my friend. 
Turn hack the century a few decades, and we 
are together on a moonlight night, taking a 
short cut through the fields from the farm of 
Craigiebuckle. Buxom were Craigiebuckle ’s 
“dochters,” and Jamie was Janet’s accepted 
suitor. It was a muddy road through damp 
grass, and we picked our way silently over its 
ruts and pools. “I’m thinkin’,” Jamie said 
at last, a little wistfully, “that I micht haebeen 
as weel wi’ Chirsty.” Chirsty was Janet’s 
sister, and Jamie had first thought of her. 
Craigiebuckle, however, strongly advised him 
to take Janet instead, and he consented. 
Alack ! heavy wobs have taken all the grace 
from Janet’s shoulders this many a year, 
though she and Jamie go bravely down the 
hill together. Unless they pass the allotted 
span of life, the “ poors-house” will never know 


LADS AND LASSES. 


101 


them. As for bonny Chirsty, she proved a 
flighty thing, and married a deacon in the Es- 
tablished Church. The Auld Lichts groaned 
over her fall, Craigiebuckle hung his head, 
and the minister told her sternly to go her 
way. But a few weeks afterward Lang Tam- 
mas, the chief elder, was observed talking 
with her for an hour in Gowrie’s close; and 
the very next Sabbath Chirsty pushed her hus- 
band in triumph into her father’s pew. The 
minister, though completely taken by surprise, 
at once referred to the stranger, in a prayer of 
great length, as a brand that might yet be 
plucked from the burning. Changing his text, 
he preached at him ; Lang Tammas, the pre- 
centor, and the whole congregation (Chirsty 
included) sang at him ; and before he exactly 
realized his position he had become an Auld 
Licht for life. Chirsty ’s triumph was com- 
plete when, next week, in broad daylight, too, 
the minister’s wife called, and (in the presence 
of Betsy Munn, who vouches for the truth of 
the story) graciously asked her to come up to 
the manse on Thursday, at 4 p.m., and drink 


102 


AULD Lx CHI’ IDYLS. 


a dish of tea. Chirsty, who knew her position, 
of course begged modestly to be excused ; but 
a coolness arose over the invitation between 
her and Janet — who felt slighted — that w T as 
only made up at the laying-out of Chirsty ’s 
;ather-in-law, to which Janet was pleasantly 
invited. 

When they had red up the house, the Auld 
Licht lassies sat in the gloaming at their doors 
on three-legged stools, patiently knitting stock- 
ings. To them came stiff -limbed youths who, 
with a“Blawy nicht, Jeanie” (to which the 
inevitable answer was, “It is so, Cha-rles”), 
rested their shoulders on the doorpost, and si- 
lently followed with their eyes the flashing 
needles. Thus the courtship began — often to 
ripen promptly into marriage, at other times 
to go no farther. The smooth-haired maids, 
neat in their simple wrappers, knew they were 
on their trial, and that it behoved them to be 
wary. They had not compassed twenty win- 
ters without knowing that Marget Todd lost 
Davie Haggart because she “fittit” a black 
stocking with brown worsted, and that Finny’s 


LADS AND LASSES. 


103 


grieve turned from Bell Whamond on account 
of the frivolous flowers in her bonnet : and yet 
Bell’s prospects, as I happen to know, at one 
time looked bright and promising. Sitting 
over her father’s peat-fire one night gossiping 
with him about fishing-flies and tackle, I no- 
ticed the grieve, who had dropped in by ap- 
pointment with some ducks’ eggs on which 
Bell’s clockin’ hen was to sit, performing some 
sleight-of-hand trick with his coat-sleeve. 
Craftily he jerked and twisted it, till his own 
photograph (a black smudge on white) gradually 
appeared to view. This he gravely slipped into 
the hands of the maid of his choice, and then 
took his departure, apparently much relieved. 
Had not Bell’s light-headedness driven him 
away, the grieve would have soon followed up 
his gift with an offer of his hand. Some night 
Bell would have “seen him to the door,” and 
they would have stared sheepishly at each other 
before saying good-night. The parting salu- 
tation given, the grieve would still have stood 
his ground, and Bell would have waited with 
him. At last, “Will ye hae’s, Bell?” would 


104 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


have dropped from his half-reluctant lips ; and 
Bell would have mumbled, “Ay,” with her 
thumb in her mouth. “ Guid nicht to ye, Bell, ” 
would be the next remark — “ Guid nicht to ye, 
Jeames,” the answer; the humble door would 
close softly, and Bell and her lad would have 
been engaged. But, as it was, their attach- 
ment never got beyond the silhouette stage, 
from which, in the ethics of the Auld Lichts, 
a man can draw back in certain circumstances 
without loss of honor. The only really tender 
thing I ever heard an Auld Licht lover say to 
his sweetheart was when Gowrie’s brother 
looked softly into Easie Tamson’s eyes and 
whispered, “Do you swite (sweat)?” Even 
then the effect was produced more by the lov- 
ing cast in Gowrie’s eye than by the tenderness 
of the words themselves. 

The courtships were sometimes of long du- 
ration, but as soon as the young man realized 
that he was courting he proposed. Cases were 
not wanting in which he realized this for him- 
self, but as a rule he had to be told of it. 

There were a few instances of weddings 


LADS AND LASSES. 


105 


among the Auld Lichts that did not take place 
on Friday. Betsy Munn’s brother thought to 
assert his two coal-carts, about which he was 
sinfully puffed up, by getting married early in 
the week; but he was a pragmatical feckless 
body, Jamie. The foreigner from York that 
Finny’s grieve after* disappointing Jinny Wha- 
mond took, sought to sow the seeds of strife by 
urging that Friday was an unlucky day ; and 
I remember how the minister, who was always 
great in a crisis, nipped the bickering in the 
bud by adducing the conclusive fact that he 
had been married on the sixth day of the week 
himself. It was a judicious policy on Mr. 
Dishart’s part to take vigorous action at once 
and insist on the solemnization of the mar- 
riage on a Friday or not at all, for he best 
kept superstition out of the congregation by 
branding it as heresy. Perhaps the Auld 
Lichts were only ignorant of the grieve ’s lass’ 
theory because they had not thought of it. 
Friday’s claims, too, were incontrovertible ; for 
the Saturday’s being a slack day gave the 
couple an opportunity to put their but and ben 


106 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


in order, and on Sabbath they had a gay day 
of it — three times at the kirk. The honeymoon 
over, the racket of the loom began again on 
the Monday. 

The natural politeness of the Allardice fam- 
ily gave me my invitation to Tibbie’s wed- 
ding. I was taking tea and cheese early one 
wintry afternoon with the smith and his wife, 
when little Joey Todd in his Sabbath clothes 
peered in at the passage, and then knocked 
primly at the door. Andra forgot himself, 
and called out to him to come in by; but Jess 
frowned him into silence, and, hastily donning 
her black mutch, received Willie on the thresh- 
old. Both halves of the door were open, and 
the visitor had looked us over carefully before 
knocking ; but he had come with the compli- 
ments of Tibbie’s mother, requesting the pleas- 
ure of Jess and her man that evening to the 
lassie’s marriage with Sam’l Todd, and the 
knocking at the door was part of the ceremony. 
Five minutes afterward Joey returned to beg 
a moment of me in the passage ; when I, too, 
got my invitation. The lad had just re- 


LADS AND LASSES. 


107 


ceived, with an expression of polite surprise, 
though he knew he could claim it as his right, 
a slice of crumbling shortbread, and taken his 
staid departure, when Jess cleared the tea- 
things off the table, remarking simply that it 
was a mercy we had not got beyond the first 
cup. We then retired to dress. 

About six o’clock, the time announced for 
the ceremony, I elbowed my way through the 
expectant throng of men, women, and children 
that already besieged the smith’s door. Shrill 
demands of “Toss, toss!” rent the air every 
time Jess’ head showed on the window-blind, 
and Andra hoped, as I pushed open the door, 
“that I hadna forgotten my bawbees.” Wed- 
dings were celebrated among the Auld Lichts 
by showers of ha’pence, and the guests on 
their way to the bride’s house had to scatter 
to the hungry rabble like housewives feeding 
poultry. Willie Todd, the best man, who had 
never come out so strong in his life before, 
slipped through the back window, while the 
crowd, led on by Kitty McQueen, seethed in 
front, and making a bolt for it to the “ ’Sosh,” 


108 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


was back in a moment with a handful of small 
change. “Dinna toss ower lavishly at first,” 
the smith whispered me nervously, as we fol- 
lowed Jess and Willie into the darkening wynd. 

The guests were packed hot and solemn in 
Johnny Allardice’s “room:” the men anxious 
to surrender their seats to the ladies who hap- 
pened to be standing, but too bashful to pro- 
pose it ; the ham and the fish frizzling noisily 
side by side but the house, and hissing out every 
now and then to let all whom it might concern 
know that Janet Craik was adding more water 
to the gravy. A better woman never lived ; 
but, oh, the hypocrisy of the face that beamed 
greeting to the guests as if it had nothing to 
do but politely show them in, and gasped next 
moment with upraised arms over what was 
nearly a fall in crockery. When Janet sped 
to the door her “spleet new” merino dress fell, 
to the pulling of a string, over her home-made 
petticoat, like the drop-scene in a theatre, and 
rose as promptly when she returned to slice the 
bacon. The murmur of admiration that filled 
the room when she entered with the minister 


LADS AND LASSES. 


109 


was an involuntary tribute to the spotlessness 
of her wrapper and a great triumph for Janet. 
If there is an impression that the dress of the 
Auld Lichts was on all occasions as sombre as 
their faces, let it be known that the bride was 
but one of several in “whites,” and that Mag 
Munn had only at the last moment been dis- 
suaded from wearing flowers. The minister, 
the Auld Lichts congratulated themselves, dis- 
approved of all such decking of the person and 
bowing of the head to* idols ; but on such an 
occasion he was not expected to observe it. 
Bell Whamond, however, has reason for know- 
ing that, marriages or no marriages, he drew 
the line at curls. 

By-and-bye Sam’l Todd, looking a little dazed, 
was pushed into the middle of the room to 
Tibbie’s side, and the minister raised his voice 
in prayer. All eyes closed reverently, except 
perhaps the bridegroom’s, which seemed glazed 
and vacant. It was an open question in the 
community whether Mr. Dishart did not miss 
his chance at weddings ; the men shaking their 
heads over the comparative brevity of the cer- 


110 


. AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


emony, the women worshipping him (though 
he never hesitated to rehuke them when they 
showed it too openly) for the urbanity of his 
manners. At that time, however, only a min- 
ister of such experience as Mr. Dishart’s prede- 
cessor could lead up to a marriage in prayer 
without inadvertently joining the couple; and 
the catechizing was mercifully brief. An- 
other prayer followed the union ; the minister 
waived his right to kiss the bride ; every one 
looked at every other one as if he had for the 
moment forgotten what he was on the point of 
saying and found it very annoying; and Janet 
signed frantically to Willie Todd, who nodded 
intelligently in reply, hut evidently had no idea 
what she meant. In time Johnny Allardice, 
our host, who became more and more and 
doited as the night proceeded, remembered his 
instructions, and led the way to the kitchen, 
where the guests, having politely informed 
their hostess that they were not hungry, par- 
took of a hearty tea. Mr. Dishart presided, 
with the bride and bridegroom near him ; hut 
though he tried to give an agreeable turn to 


LADS AND LASSES. 


Ill 


the conversation by describing the extensions 
at the cemetery, his personality oppressed us, 
and we only breathed freely when he rose to 
go. Yet we marvelled at his versatility. In 
shaking hands with the newly married couple 
the minister reminded them that it was leap- 
year, and wished them “three hundred and 
sixty-six happ}’ and God-fearing days.” 

Sam’Ps station being too high for it, Tibbie 
did not have a penny wedding, which her 
thrifty mother bewailed, penny weddings start- 
ing a couple in life. I can recall nothing more 
characteristic of the nation from which the 
Auld Lichts sprang than the penny wedding, 
where the only revellers that were not out of 
pocket by it were the couple who gave the en- 
tertainment. The more the guests ate and 
drank the better, pecuniarily, for their hosts. 
The charge for admission to the penny wed- 
ding (practically to the feast that followed it) 
varied in different districts, but with us it was 
generally a shilling. Perhaps the penny extra 
to the fiddler accounts for the name penny 
wedding. The ceremony having been gone 


112 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


through in the bride’s house, there was an 
adjournment to a barn or other convenient 
place of meeting, where was held the nuptial 
feast; long white boards from Rob Angus’ 
saw-mill, supported on trestles, stood in lieu 
of tables ; and those of the company who could 
not find a seat waited patiently against the 
wall for a vacancy. The shilling gave every 
guest the free run of the groaning board ; but 
though fowls were plentiful, and even white 
bread too, little had been spent on them. The 
farmers of the neighborhood, who looked for- 
ward to providing the young people with drills 
of potatoes for the coming winter, made a bid 
for their custom by sending them a fowl gratis 
for the marriage supper. It was popularly 
understood to be the oldest cock of the farm- 
yard, but for all that it made a brave appear- 
ance in a shallow sea of soup. The fowls 
were always boiled — without exception, so far 
as my memory carries me ; the guid-wife never 
having the heart to roast them, and so lose the 
broth. One round of whiskey-and -water was 
all the drink to which his shilling entitled the 


LADS AND LASSES. 


118 


guest. If he wanted more he had to pay for 
it. There was much revelry, with song and 
dance, that no stranger could have thought 
those stiff-limbed, weavers capable of ; and the 
more they shouted and whirled through the 
barn, the more their host smiled and rubbed 
his hands. He presided at the bar improvised 
for the occasion, and if the thing was con- 
ducted with spirit his bride flung an apron 
over her gown and helped him. I remember 
one elderly bridegroom who, having married 
a blind woman, had to do double work at his 
penny wedding. It was a sight to see him 
flitting about the torch-lit barn, with a kettle 
of hot water in one hand and a besom to sweep 
up crumbs in the other. 

Though SamT had no penny wedding, how- 
ever, we made a night of it at his marriage. 

Wedding-chariots were not in those days, 
though I know of Auld Lichts being conveyed 
to marriages nowadays by horses with white 
ears. The tea over, we formed in couples, 
and — the best man with the bride, the bride- 
groom with the best maid, leading the way — 
8 


114 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


marched in slow procession in the moonlight 
night to Tibbie’s new home, between lines of 
hoarse and eager onlookers. An attempt was 
made by an itinerant musician to head the 
company with his fiddle; but instrumental 
music, even in the streets, was abhorrent to 
sound Auld Lichts, and the minister had spoken 
privately to Willie Todd on the subject. As 
a consequence, Peter was driven from the 
ranks. The last thing I saw that night, as we 
filed, bareheaded and solemn, into the newly 
married couple’s house, was Kitty McQueen’s 
vigorous arm, in a dishevelled sleeve, pound- 
ing a pair of urchins who had got between her 
and a muddy ha’penny. 

That night there was revelry and boisterous 
mirth (or what the Auld Lichts took for such) 
in Tibbie’s kitchen. At eleven o’clock Davit 
Lunan cracked a joke. Davie Haggart, in 
reply to Bell Dundas’ request, gave a song of 
distinctly secular tendencies. The bride (who 
had carefully taken off her wedding-gown on 
getting home and donned a wrapper) coquet- 
tishly let the bridegroom’s father hold her 


LADS AND LASSES. 


115 


hand. In Auld Licht circles, when one of the 
company was offered whiskey and refused it, 
the others, as if pained even at the offer, pushed 
it from them as a thing abhorred. But Davie 
Haggart set another example on this occasion, 
and no one had the courage to refuse to follow 
it. We sat late round the dying fire, and it 
was only Willie Todd’s scandalous assertion 
(he was but a boy) about his being able to 
dance that induced us to think of moving. 
In the community, I understand, this marriage 
is still memorable as the occasion on which 
Bell Whamond laughed in the minister’s face. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 

Arms and men I sing : douce Jeemsy Todd, 
rushing from his loom, armed with a bed -post ; 
Lisbeth Whamond, an avenging whirlwind; 
Neil Haggart, pausing in his thank-offerings 
to smite and slay; the impious foe scudding up 
the bleeding Brae-head with Nemesis at their 
flashing heels ; the minister holding it a nice 
question whether the carnage was not justified. 
Then came the two hours’ sermons of the fol- 
lowing Sabbath, when Mr. Dishart, revolving 
like a teetotum in the pulpit, damned every 
bandaged person present, individually and col- 
lectively ; and Lang Tammas in the precentor’s 
box with a plaster on his cheek, included any 
one the minister might have by chance omitted, 
and the congregation, with most of their eyes 
bunged up, burst into psalms of praise. 

Twice a year the Auld Lichts went demented. 

116 


THE AULD LIGHTS IN ARMS. 117 

The occasion was the fast-day at Tilliedrum ; 
when its inhabitants, instead of crowding rev- 
erently to the kirk, swooped profanely down 
in their scores and tens of scores on onr God- 
fearing town, intent on making a day of it. 
Then did the weavers rise as one man, and go 
forth to show the ribald crew the errors of 
their way. All denominations were repre- 
sented, but Auld Lichts led. An Auld Licht 
would have taken no man’s blood without the 
conviction that he would be the better morally 
for the bleeding; and if Tammas Lunan’s case 
gave an impetus to the blows, it can only have 
been because it opened wider Auld Licht eyes 
to Tilliedrum ’s desperate condition. Mr. 
Dishart’s predecessor more than once remarked 
that at the Creation the devil put forward a 
claim for Thrums, but said he would take his 
chance of Tilliedrum ; and the statement was 
generally understood to be made on the author- 
ity of the original Hebrew. 

The mustard-seed of a feud between the 
two parishes shot into a tail tree in a single 
night, when Davit Lunan’s father went to a 


118 


AULD LIJHT IDYLS. 


tattie roup at Tilliedrum and thoughtlessly died 
there. Twenty-four hours afterward a small 
party of staid Auld Lichts, carrying long white 
poles, stepped out of various wynds and closes 
and picked their solemn way to the house of 
mourning. Nanny Low, the widow, received 
them dejectedly, as one oppressed by the 
knowledge that her man’s death at such an in- 
opportune place did not fulfil the promise of 
his youth; and her guests admitted bluntly 
that they were disappointed in Tamm as. 
Snecky Hobart’s father’s unusually long and 
impressive prayer was an official intimation 
that the deceased, in the opinion of the ses- 
sion, sorely needed everything of the kind he 
could get ; and then the silent driblet of Auld 
Lichts in black stalked off in the direction of 
Tilliedrum. Women left their spinning- 
wheels and pirns to follow them with their eyes 
along the Tenements, and the minister was 
known to be holding an extra service at the 
manse. When the little procession reached 
the boundary-line between the two parishes, 
they sat down on a dyke and waited. 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS . 


119 


By-and-bye half a dozen men drew near from 
the opposite direction, bearing on poles the re- 
mains of Tammas Lunan in a closed coffin. 
The coffin was brought to within thirty yards 
of those who awaited it, and then roughly low- 
ered to the ground. Its bearers rested morosely 
on their poles. In conveying Lunan’ s remains 
to the borders of his own parish they were only 
conforming to custom ; but Thrums and Tillie- 
drum differed as to where the boundary-line 
was drawn, and not a foot would either ad- 
vance into the other’s territory. 

For half a day the coffin lay unclaimed, and 
the two parties sat scowling at each other. 
Neither dared move. Gloaming had stolen into 
the valley when Dite Deu chars, of Tilliedrum, 
rose to his feet and deliberately spat upon the 
coffin. A stone whizzed through the air; and 
then the ugly spectacle was presented, in the 
gray night, of a dozen mutes fighting with 
their poles over a coffin. There was blood on 
the shoulders that bore Tammas’ remains to 
Thrums. 

After that meeting Tilliedrum lived for the 


120 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


fast-day. Never, perhaps, was there a com- 
munity more given up to sin, and Thrums felt 
“called” to its chastisement. The insult to 
Lunan’s coffin, however, dispirited their weav- 
ers for a time, and not until the suicide of Pit- 
lums did they put much fervor into their pray- 
ers. It made new men of them. Tilliedrum ’s 
sins had found it out. Pitlums was a farmer 
in the parish of Thrums, hut he had been born 
at Tilliedrum; and Thrums thanked Provi- 
dence for that, when it saw him suspended 
between two hams from his kitchen rafters. 
The custom was to cart suicides to the quarry 
at the Galla pond and bury them near the 
cairn that had supported the gallows ; hut on 
this occasion not a farmer in the parish would 
lend a cart, and for a week the corpse lay on 
the sanded floor as it had been cut down — an 
object of awestruck interest to boys who knew 
no better than to peep through the darkened 
window. Tilliedrum bit its lips at home. The 
Auld Licht minister, it was said, had been ap- 
proached on the subject; but, after serious 
consideration, did not see his way to offering 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 


121 


up a prayer. Finally old Hobart and two oth- 
ers tied a rope round the body, and dragged it 
from the farm to the cairn, a distance of four 
miles. Instead of this incident’s humbling 
Tilliedrum into attending church, the next 
fast-day saw its streets deserted. As for the 
Thrums Auld Lichts, only heavy wobs pre- 
vented their walking erect like men who had 
done their duty. If no prayer was volunteered 
for Pitlums before his burial, there was a great 
deal of psalm-singing after it. 

. By early morn on their fast-day the Tillie- 
drummers were straggling into Thrums, and 
the weavers, already at their looms, read the 
clattering of feet and carts aright. To con- 
vince themselves, all they had to do was to 
raise their eyes; but the first triumph would 
have been to Tilliedrum if they had done that. 
The invaders — the men in Aberdeen blue serge 
coats, velvet knee-breeches, and broad blue 
bonnets, and the wincey gowns of the women 
set off with hooded cloaks of red or tartan — 
tapped at the windows and shouted insultingly 
as they passed ; but, with pursed lips, Thrums 


122 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


bent fiercely over its wobs, and not an Auld 
Licht showed outside his door. The day wore 
on to noon, and still ribaldry was master of 
the wynds. But there was a change inside the 
houses. The minister had pulled down his 
blinds; moody men had left their looms for 
stools by the fire ; there were rumors of a con- 
flict in Andra Gowrie’s close, from which Kitty 
McQueen had emerged with her short gown in 
rags ; and Lang Tammas was going from door 
to door. The austere precentor admonished 
fiery youth to beware of giving way to pas- 
sion; and it was a proud day for the Auld 
Lichts to find their leading elder so conversant 
with apt Scripture texts. They bowed their 
heads reverently while he thundered forth that 
those who lived by the sword would perish by 
the sword ; and when he had finished they took 
him ben to inspect their bludgeons. I have a 
vivid recollection of going the round of the 
Auld Licht and other houses to see the sticks 
and the wrists in coils of wire. 

A stranger in the Tenements in the after- 
noon would, have noted more than one draggled 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 123 

youth in holiday attire, sitting on. a doorstep 
with a wet cloth to his nose; and, passing 
down the commonty, he would have had to 
step over prostrate lumps of humanity from 
which all shape had departed. Gavin Ogilvy 
limped heavily after his encounter with 
Th rummy Tosh — a struggle that was looked 
forward to eagerly as a bi-yearly event ; Christy 
Davie’s development of muscle had not pre- 
vented her going down before the terrible on- 
slaught of Joe the miller, and Lang Tammas’ 
plasters told a tale. It was in the square that 
the two parties, leading their maimed and 
blind, formed in force; Tilliedrum thirsting 
for its opponents’ blood, and Thrums humbly 
accepting the responsibility of punching the 
fast-day breakers into the ways of rectitude. 
In the small, ill-kept square the invaders, to the 
number of about a hundred, were wedged to- 
gether at its upper end, while the Thrums peo- 
ple formed in a thick line at the foot. For its 
inhabitants the way to Tilliedrum lay through 
this threatening mass of armed weavers. No 
words were bandied between the two forces; 


124 


ATJLD LIGHT IDYLS. 


the centre* of the square was left open, and 
nearly every eye was fixed on the town -house 
clock. It directed operations and gave the sig- 
nal to charge. The moment six o’clock struck, 
the upper mass broke its bonds and flung 
itself on the living barricade. There was a clat- 
ter of heads and sticks, a yelling and a groan- 
ing, and then the invaders, bursting through 
the opposing ranks, fled for Tilliedrum. Down 
the Tanage brae and up the Brae -head they 
skurried, half a hundred avenging spirits in 
pursuit. On the Tilliedrum fast-day I have 
tasted blood myself. In the godless place there 
is no Auld Licht kirk, but there are two Auld 
Liehts in it now who walk to Thrums to church 
every Sabbath, blow or rain as it lists. They 
are making their influence felt in Tilliedrum. 

The Auld Liehts also did valorous deeds at 
the Battle of Cabbylatch. The farm land so 
named lies a mile or more to the south of 
Thrums. You have to go over the rim of the 
cut to reach it. It is low-lying and uninterest- 
ing to the eye, except for some giant stones 
scattered cold and naked through the fields. 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 


125 


No human hands reared these bowlders, but 
they might he looked upon as tombstones to 
the heroes who fell (to rise hurriedly) on the 
plain of Cabbylatch. 

The fight of Cabbylatch belongs to the days 
of what are now but dimly remembered as the 
Meal Mobs. Then, there was a wild cry all 
over the country for bread (not the fine loaves 
that we know, but something very much 
coarser), and hungry men and women, pre- 
maturely shrunken, began to forget the taste 
of meal. Potatoes were their chief sustenance, 
and, when the crop failed, starvation gripped 
them. At that time the farmers, having con- 
trol of the meal, had the small towns at their 
mercy, and they increased its cost. The price 
of the meal went up and up, until the famish- 
ing people swarmed up the sides of the carts in 
which it was conveyed to the towns, and, tear- 
ing open the sacks, devoured it in handfuls. 
In Thrums they had a stern sense of justice, 
and for a time, after taking possession of the 
meal, they carried it to the square and sold it 
at what they considered a reasonable price. 


126 


ATJLD LICHT IDYLS. 


The money was handed over to the farmers. 
The honesty of this is worth thinking about, 
but it seems to have only incensed the farmers 
the more ; and when they saw that to send their 
meal to the town was not to get high prices for 
it, they laid their heads together and then 
gave notice that the people who wanted meal 
and were able to pay for it must come to the 
farms. In Thrums no one who cared to live 
on porridge and bannocks had money to satisfy 
the farmers ; but, on the other hand, none of 
them grudged going for it, and go they did. 
They went in numbers from farm to farm, like 
bands of hungry rats, and throttled the oppo- 
sition they not infrequently encountered. The 
raging farmers at last met in council, and, not- 
ing that they were lusty men and brave, re- 
solved to march in armed force upon the erring 
people and burn their town. Now we come to 
the Battle of Cabbylatch. 

The farmers were not less than eighty 
strong, and chiefly consisted of cavalry. 
Armed with pitchforks and cumbrous scythes 
where they were not able to lay their hands on 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 


127 


the more orthodox weapons of war, they pre- 
sented a determined appearance; the few foot- 
soldiers who had no cart-horses at their disposal 
bearing in their arms bundles of firewood. 
One memorable morning they set out to avenge 
their losses ; and by and by a halt was called, 
when each man bowed his head to listen. In 
Thrums, pipe and drum were calling the in- 
habitants to arms. Scouts rushed in with the 
news that the farmers were advancing rapidly 
upon the town, and soon the streets were clat- 
tering with feet. At that time Thrums had 
its piper and drummer (the bellman of a later 
and more degenerate age) ; and on this occa- 
sion they marched together through the narrow 
wynds, firing the blood of haggard men and 
summoning them to the square. According to 
my informant’s father, the gathering of these 
angry and startled weavers, when he thrust 
his blue bonnet on his head and rushed out; 
to join them, was an impressive and solemn 
spectacle. That bloodshed was meant there 
can be no doubt ; for starving men do not see 
the ludicrous side of things. The difference 


128 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


between the farmers and the town had re- 
solved ifcself into an ugly and sullen hate, and 
the wealthier townsmen who would have come 
between the people and the bread were fiercely 
pushed aside. There was no nominal leader, 
but every man in the ranks meant to fight for 
himself and his belongings ; and they are said 
to have sallied out to meet the foe in no dis- 
order. The women they would fain have left 
behind them; but these had their own injuries 
to redress, and they followed in their husbands’ 
wake carrying bags of stones. The men, who 
were of various denominations, were armed 
with sticks, blunderbusses, anything they could 
snatch up at a moment’s notice; and some of 
them were not unacquainted with fighting. 
Dire silence prevailed, among the men, but the 
women shouted as they ran, and the curious 
army moved forward to the drone and squall 
of drum and pipe. The enemy was sighted 
on the level land cf Cabby latch; and here, 
while the intending combatants glared at each 
other, a well-known local magnate galloped 
his horse between them and ordered them in 


THE AULD LICHTS IN ARMS. 


129 


the name of the king to return to their homes. 
But for the farmers that meant further dep- 
redation at the people’s hands, and the towns- 
men would not go back to their gloomy homes 
to sit down and wait for sunshine. Soon 
stones (the first, it is said, cast by a woman) 
darkened the air. The farmers got the word 
to charge, but their horses, with the best in- 
tentions, did not know the way. There was 
a stampeding in different directi 3ns, a blind 
rushing of one frightened steed against an- 
other ; and then the townspeople, breaking 
any ranks they had hitherto managed to keep, 
rushed vindictively forward. The struggle at 
Cabbylatch itself was not of long duration ; for 
their own horses proved the farmers’ worst 
enemies, except in the cases where these sa- 
gacious animals took matters into their own 
ordering and bolted judiciously for their sta- 
bles. The day was to Thrums. 

Individual deeds of prowess were done that 
day. Of these not the least fondly remem- 
bered by her descendants were those of the 

gallant matron who pursued the most obnox- 
9 


130 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


ious farmer in the district even to his very 
porch with heavy stones and opprobrious epi- 
thets. Once when he thought he had left her 
far behind did he alight to draw breath and 
take a pinch of snuff, and she was upon him 
like a flail. With a terror stricken cry he 
leaped once more upon his horse and fled, but 
not without leaving his snuff-box in the hands 
of the derisive enemy. Meggy has long gone 
to the kirk-yard, but the snuff-mull is still 
preserved. 

Some ugly cuts were given and received, and 
heads as well as ribs were broken; but the 
townsmen’s triumph was short-lived. The 
ringleaders were whipped through the streets 
of Perth, as a warning to persons thinking of 
taking the law into their own hands ; and all 
the lasting consolation they got was that, some 
time afterward, the chief witness against 
them, the parish minister, met with a mysteri- 
ous death. They said it was evidently the 
hand of God; but some people looked suspi- 
ciously at them when they said it. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 

From the new cemetery, which is the high- 
est point in Thrums, you just fail to catch 
sight of the red school-house that nestles be- 
tween two bare trees, some five miles up the 
glen of Quharity. This was proved by Davit 
Lunan, tinsmith, whom I have heard tell the 
story. It was in the time when the cemetery 
gates were locked to keep the bodies of suicides 
out, but men who cared to risk the conse- 
quences could get the coffin over the high dyke 
and bury it themselves. Peter Lundy’s coffin 
broke, as one might say, into the church-yard 
in this way, Peter having hanged himself in 
the Whunny wood when he saw that work he 
must. The general feeling among the inti- 
mates of the deceased was expressed by Davit 
when he said : 


131 


. 132 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“It may do the crittur nae guid i’ the tail 
o’ the day, but he paid for’s bit o’ ground, 
an’ he’s in’s richt to occupy it.” 

The custom was to push the coffin on to the 
wall up a plank, and then let it drop less care- 
fully into the cemetery. Some of the mourn- 
ers were dragging the plank over the wall, 
with Davit Lunan on the top directing them, 
when they seem to have let go and sent the 
tinsmith suddenly into the air. A week after- 
ward it struck Davit, when in the act of sol- 
dering a hole in Leeby Wheens’ flagon (here 
he branched off to explain that he had made 
the flagon years before, and that Leehy was 
sister to Tammas Wheens, and . married one 
Baker Robbie* who died of chicken-pox in his 
forty-fourth year), that when “up there” he 
had a view of Quharity school-house. Davit 
was as truthful as a man who tells the same 
story more than once can he expected to he, 
and it is far from a suspicious circumstance 
that he did not remember seeing the school- 
house all at once. In Thrums things only 
struck them gradually. The new cemetery, 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


133 


for instance, was only so called because it had 
been new once. 

In this red stone school, full of the modern 
improvements that he detested, the old dom- 
inie whom I succeeded taught, and. sometimes 
slept, during the last five years of his cantank- 
erous life. It was in a little thatched school, 
consisting of but one room, that he did his 
best work, some five hundred yards away from 
the edifice that was reared in its stead. Now 
dismally fallen into disrepute, often indeed a 
domicile for cattle, the ragged academy of 
Glen Quharity, where he held despotic sway 
for nearly half a century, is falling to pieces 
slowly in a howe that conceals it from the 
high-road. Even in its best scholastic days, 
when it sent barefooted lads to college who 
helped to hasten the Disruption, it was but a 
pile of ungainly stones, such as Scott’s Black 
Dwarf flung together in a night, with holes 
in its broken roof of thatch where the rain 
trickled through, and never with less than two 
of its knotted little window-panes stopped with 
brown paper. The twelve or twenty pupils of 


134 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


both sexes who constituted the attendance sat 
at the two loose desks, which never fell unless 
you leaned on them, with an eye on the corner 
of the earthen floor where the worms came 
out, and on cold days they liked the wind to 
turn the peat smoke into the room. One boy, 
who was supposed to wash it out, got his edu- 
cation free for keeping the school-house dirty, 
and the others paid their way with peats, which 
they brought in their hands, just as wealthier 
school-children carry books, and with pence 
which the dominie collected regularly every 
Monday morning. The attendance on Monday 
mornings was often small. 

Once a year the dominie added to his income 
by holding cockfights in the old school. This 
was at Yule, and the same practice held in the 
parish school of Thrums. It must have been a 
strange sight. Every male scholar was expect- 
ed to bring a cock to the school, and to pay a 
shilling to the dominie for the privilege of see- 
ing it killed there. The dominie was the master 
of the sports, assisted by the neighboring farm- 
ers, some of whom might be elders of the 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


185 


church. Three rounds were fought. By the 
end of the first round all the cocks had fought, 
and the victors were then pitted against each 
other. The cocks that survived the second 
round were eligible for the third, and the dom- 
inie, besides his shilling, got every cock killed. 
Sometimes, if all stories be true, the spectators 
were fighting with each other before the third 
round concluded. 

The glen was but sparsely dotted with houses 
even in those days ; a number of them inhab- 
ited by farmer-weavers, who combined two 
trades and just managed to live. One would 
have a plough, another a horse, and so in Glen 
Quharity they helped each other. Without a 
loom in addition many of them would have 
starved, and on Saturdays the big farmer and 
his wife, driving home in a gig, would pass 
the little farmer carrying or wheeling his wob 
to Thrums. When there was no longer a 
market for the produce of the hand -loom these 
farms had to be given up, and thus it is that 
the old school is not the only house in our 
weary glen around which gooseberry and cur- 


136 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


rant bushes, once tended by careful hands, now 
grow wild. 

In heavy spates the children were conveyed 
to the old school, as they are still to the new 
one, in carts, and between it and the dominie’s 
whitewashed dwelling-house swirled in winter 
a torrent of water that often carried lumps of 
the land along with it. This burn he had at 
times to ford on stilts. 

Before the Education Act passed the dominie 
was not much troubled by the school inspector, 
who appeared in great splendor every year at 
Thrums. Fifteen years ago, however, Glen 
Quharity resolved itself into a School Board, 
and marched down the glen, with the minister 
at its head, to condemn the school. When the 
dominie, who had heard of their design, saw 
the board approaching, he. sent one of his 
scholars, who enjoyed making a mess of him- 
self, wading across the burn to bring over the 
stilts which were lying on the other side.. The 
board were thus unable to send across a spokes- 
man, and after they had harangued the dom- 
inie, who was in the best of tempers, from the 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


137 


wrong side of the stream, the siege was raised 
by their returning home, this time with the 
minister in the rear. So far as is known, this 
was the only occasion on which the dominie 
ever lifted his hat to the minister. He was 
the Established Church minister at the top of 
the glen, but the dominie was an Auld Licht, 
and trudged into Thrums to church nearly 
every Sunday with his daughter. 

The farm of Little Tilly lay so close to the 
dominie’s house that from one window he could 
see through a telescope whether the farmer 
was going to church, owing to Little Tilly’s 
habit of never shaving except with that inten- 
tion, and of always doing it at a looking-glass 
which he hung on a nail in his door. The 
farmer was Established Church, and when the 
dominie saw him in his shirt-sleeves with a 
razor in his hand, he called for his black 
clothes. If he did not see him it is undeniable 
that the dominie sent his daughter to Thrums, 
but remained at home himself. Possibly, 
therefore, the dominie sometimes went to 
•church, because he did not want to give Little 


138 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


Tilly and the Established minister the satisfac- 
tion of knowing that he was not devout to- 
day, and it is even conceivable that had Little 
Tilly had a telescope and an intellect as well 
as his neighbor, he would have spied on the 
dominie in return. He sent the teacher a load 
of potatoes ev%ry year, and the recipient rated 
him soundly if they did not turn out as well as 
the ones he had got the autumn before. Lit- 
tle Tilly was rather in awe of the dominie, and 
had an idea that he was a Freethinker, because 
he played the fiddle and wore a black cap. 

The dominie was a wizened-looking little 
man, with sharp eyes that pierced you when 
they thought they were unobserved, and if 
any visitor drew near who might be a member 
of the board, he disappeared into his house 
much as a startled weasel makes for its hole. 
The most striking thing about him was his 
walk, which to the casual observer seemed a 
limp. The glen in our part is marshy, and to 
progress along it you have to jump from one 
little island of grass or heather to another. 
Perhaps it was this that made the dominie 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


139 


take the main road and even the streets of 
Thrums in leaps, as if there were bowlders or 
puddles in the way. It is, however, currently 
believed among those who knew him best that 
he jerked himself along in that way when he 
applied for the vacancy in Glen Quharity 
school, and that he was therefore chosen from 
among the candidates by the committee of 
farmers, who saw that he was specially con- 
structed for the district. 

In the spring the inspector was sent to report 
on the school, and, of course, he said, with a 
wave of his hand, that this would never do. 
So a new school was built, and the ramshackle 
little academy that had done good service in 
its day was closed for the last time. For years 
it had been without a lock ; ever since a blatter 
of wind and rain drove the door against the 
fire-place. After that it was the dominie’s 
custom, on seeing the room cleared, to send in 
a smart boy — a dux was always chosen — who 
wedged a clod of earth or peat between door- 
post and door. Thus the school was locked up 
for the night. The boy came out by the win- 


140 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


dow, where he entered to open the door next 
morning. In time grass hid the little path 
from view that led to the old school, and a 
dozen years ago every particle of wood about 
the building, including the door and the frame- 
work of the windows, had been burned by trav- 
elling tinkers. 

The board would have liked to leave the 
dominie in his whitewashed dwelling-house to 
enjoy his old age comfortably, and until he 
learned that he had intended to retire. Then 
he changed his tactics and removed his beard. 
Instead of railing at the new school, he began 
to approve of it, and it soon came to the ears 
of the horrified Established minister, who had 
a man (Established) in his eye for the appoint- 
ment, that the dominie was looking ten years 
younger. As he spurned a pension he had to 
get the place, and then began a warfare of 
bickerings between the board and him that 
lasted until within a few weeks of his death. 
In his scholastic barn the dominie had thumped 
the Latin grammar into his scholars till they 
became university bursars to escape him. In 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


141 


the new school, with maps (which he hid in 
the hen-house) and every other modern appli- 
ance for making teaching easy, he was the 
scandal of the glen. He snapped at the clerk 
of the board’s throat, and barred his door in 
the minister’s face. It was one of his favorite 
relaxations to peregrinate the district, telling 
the farmers who were not on the board them- 
selves, but were given to gossiping with those 
who were, that though he could slumber pleas- 
antly in the school so long as the hum of the 
standards was kept up, he immediately woke 
if it ceased. 

Having settled himself in his new quarters, 
the dominie seems to have read over the code 
and come at once to the conclusion that it 
would be idle to think of straightforwardly 
fulfilling its requirements. The inspector he 
regarded as a natural enemy, who was to he 
circumvented by much guile. One year that 
admirable Oxford don arrived at the school, to 
find that all the children, except two girls — 
one of whom had her face tied up with red 
flannel — were away for the harvest. On an- 


142 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


other occasion the dominie met the inspector’s 
trap some distance from the school, and ex- 
plained that he would guide him by a short 
cut, leaving the driver to take the dog-cart to 
a farm where it could he put up. The unsus- 
pecting inspector agreed, and they set off, the 
obsequious dominie carrying his bag. He led 
his victim into another glen, the hills round 
which had hidden their heads in mist, and then 
slyly remarked that he was afraid they had 
lost their way. The minister, who liked to at- 
tend the examination, reproved the dominie 
for providing no luncheon, but turned pale 
when his enemy suggested that he should ex- 
amine the boys in Latin. 

For some reason that I could never discover, 
the dominie had all his life refused to teach his 
scholars geography. The inspector and many 
others asked him why there was no geography 
class, and his invariable answer was to point 
to his pupils collectively, and reply in an im- 
pressive whisper : 

“They winna hae her.” 

This story, too, seems to reflect against the 


THE OLD DOMINIE. 


143 


dominie’s views on cleanliness. One examina- 
tion day the minister attended to open the 
inspection with prayer. Just as he was finish- 
ing, a scholar entered who had a reputation 
for dirt. 

“ Michty ! ” cried a little pupil, as his opening 
eyes fell on the apparition at the door, “ there’s 
Jocky Tamson wi’ his face washed! ” 

When the dominie was a younger man he 
had first clashed with the minister during Mr. 
Rattray’s attempts to do away with some old 
customs that were already dying by inches. 
One was the selection of a queen of beauty 
from among the young women at the annual 
Thrums fair. The judges, who were selected 
from the better-known farmers as a rule, sat 
at the door of a tent that reeked of whiskey, and 
regarded the competitors filing by much as 
they selected prize sheep, with a stolid stare. 
There was much giggling and blushing on 
these occasions among the maidens, and shouts 
from their relatives and friends to “ Haud yer 
head up, Jean,” and “Lat them see yer een, 
Jess.” The dominie enjoyed this, and was one 


*44 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


time chosen a judge, when he insisted on the 
prize’s being bestowed on his own daughter, 
Marget. The other judges demurred, but the 
dominie remained firm and won the day. 

“She wasna the best-faured amon them,” he 
admitted afterward, “ but a man maun mak the 
maist o’ his ain.” 

The dominie, too, would not shake his head 
with Mr. Rattray over the apple and loaf bread 
raffles in the smithy, nor even at the Daft 
Days, the black week of glum debauch that 
ushered in the year, a period when the whole 
countryside rumbled to the farmers’ “kebec” 
laden cart. 

For the great part of his career the dominie 
had not made forty pounds a year, but he 
“died worth” about three hundred pounds. 
The moral of his life came in just as he was 
leaving it, for he rose from his death-bed to 
hide a whiskey-bottle from his wife. 


CHAPTER VII. 

CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 

The children used to fling stones at Grinder 
Queery because he loved his mother. I never 
heard the Grinder’s real name. He and his 
mother were Queery and Drolly, contempt- 
uously so called, and they answered to these 
names. I remember Cree best as a battered 
old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, 
with his arms hanging limp as if ready to 
grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which 
it was his life to totter up hill and down hill, a 
rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck 
and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to 
bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By 
and by there came a time when the barrow 
and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, 
and Cree, gasping for breath, would stop in 

the middle of a brae, unable to push his load 
10 145 


146 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


over a stone. Then he laid himself down 
behind it to prevent the barrow’s slipping back. 
On those occasions only the barefooted boys 
who jeered at the panting weaver could put 
new strength into his shrivelled arms. They 
did it by telling him that he and Mysy would 
have to go to the “poorshouse” after all, at 
which the gray old man would wince, as if 
“joukin” from a blow, and, shuddering, rise 
and, with a desperate effort, gain the top of 
the incline. Small blame perhaps attached to 
Cree if, as he neared his grave, he grew a little 
dottle. His loads of yarn frequently took him 
past the workhouse, and his eyelids quivered 
as he drew near. Boys used to gather round 
the gate in anticipation of his coming, and 
make a feint of driving him inside. Cree, 
when he observed them, sat down on his bar- 
row-shafts terrified to approach, and I see them 
now pointing to the workhouse till he left his 
barrow on the road and hobbled away, his 
legs cracking as he ran. 

It is strange to know that there was once 
a time when Cree was young and straight, a 


CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 147 

callant who wore a flower in his button-hole 
and tried to be a hero for a maiden’s sake. 

Before Cree settled down as a weaver, he 
was knife and scissor grinder for three coun- 
ties, and Mysy, his mother, accompanied him 
wherever he went. Mysy trudged alongside 
him till her eyes grew dim and her limbs failed 
her, and then Cree was told that she must he 
sent to the pauper’s home. After that a piti- 
able and beautiful sight was to he seen. 
Grinder Queery, already a feeble man, would 
wheel his grindstone along the long high-road, 
leaving Mysy behind. He took the stone on a 
few hundred yards, and then, hiding it by the 
roadside in a ditch or behind a paling, returned 
for his mother. Her he led — sometimes he 
almost carried her — to the place where the 
grindstone lay, and thus by double journeys 
kept her with him. Every one said that 
Mysy’s death would be a merciful release — 
every one but Cree. 

Cree had been a grinder from his youth, 
having learned the trade from his father, but 
he gave it up when Mysy became almost blind. 


148 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


For a time he had to leave her in Thrums with 
Dan’l Wilkie’s wife, and find employment 
himself in Tilliedrum. Mysy got me to write 
several letters for her to Cree, and she cried 
while telling me what to say. I never heard 
either of them use a term of endearment to 
the other, but all Mysy could tell me to put in 
writing was: “Oh, my son Cree; oh, my be- 
loved son; oh, I have no one but you; oh, 
thou God watch over my Cree!” On one of 
these occasions Mysy put into my hands a pa- 
per, which she said would perhaps help me to 
write the letter. It had been drawn up by 
Cree many years before, when he and his 
mother had been compelled to part for a time, 
and I saw from it that he had been trying to 
teach Mysy to write. The paper consisted of 
phrases such as “Dear son Cree,” “Loving 
mother,” “I am takin’ my food weel,” “Yes- 
terday, ” “ Blankets, ” “ The peats is near done, ” 
“Mr. Dishart,” “Come home, Cree.” The 
grinder had left this paper with his mother, 
and she had written letters to him from it. 

When Dan’l Wilkie objected to keepmg a 


CREE QTJEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 149 

cranky old body like Mysy in his house, Cree 
came hack to Thrums and took a single room 
with a hand-loom in it. The flooring was only 
lumpy earth, with sacks spread over it to pro- 
tect Mysy’s feet. The room contained two 
dilapidated old coffin-beds, a dresser, a high- 
backed arm-chair, several three-legged stools, 
and two tables, of which one could be packed 
away beneath the other. In one corner stood 
the wheel at which Cree had to fill his own 
pirns. There was a plate-rack on one wall, 
and near the chimney-piece hung the wag-at- 
the-wall clock, the time-piece that was com- 
monest in Thrums at that time, and that got 
this name because its exposed pendulum swung 
along the wall. The two windows in the 
room faced each other on opposite walls, and 
were so small that even a child might have 
stuck in trying to crawl through them. They 
opened on hinges, like a door. In the wall of 
the dark passage leading from the outer door 
into the room was a recess where a pan and 
pitcher of water always stood wedded, as it 
were, and a little hole, known as the “bole,” 


150 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


in the wall opposite the fire-place contained 
Cree’s library. It consisted of Baxter’s 
“Saints’ Rest,” Harvey’s “ Meditations, ” the 
“Pilgrim’s Progress,” a work on folk-lore, and 
several Bibles. The saut-backet, or salt- 
bucket, stood at the end of the fender, which 
was half of an old cart-wheel. Here Cree 
worked, whistling “ Ower the watter for Chair- 
lie” to make Mysy think that he was as gay 
as a mavis. Mysy grew querulous in her old 
age, and up to the end she thought of poor, 
done Cree as a handsome gallant. Only by 
weaving far on into the night could Cree earn 
as much as six shillings a week. He began at 
six o’clock in the morning, and worked until 
midnight by the light of his cruizey. The 
cruizey was all the lamp Thrums had in those 
days, though it is only to be seen in use now 
in a few old-world houses in the glens. It is 
an ungainly thing in iron, the size of a man’s 
palm, and shaped not unlike the palm when 
contracted and deepened to hold a liquid. 
Whale-oil, lying open in the mould, was used, 
and the wick was a rash with the green skin 


CREE QTJEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 151 

peeled off. These rashes were sold by herd- 
boys at a halfpenny the bundle, but Cree gath- 
ered his own wicks. The rashes skin readily 
when you know how to do it. The iron mould 
was placed inside another of the same shape, 
but slightly larger, for in time the oil dripped 
through the iron, and the whole was then hung 
by a cleek or hook close to the person using it. 
Even with three wicks it gave but a stime of 
light, and never allowed the weaver to see 
more than the half of his loom at a time. 
Sometimes Cree used threads for wicks. He 
was too dull a man to have many visitors, but 
Mr. Dishart called occasionally and reproved 
him for telling his mother lies. The lies Cree 
told Mysy were that he was sharing the meals 
he won for her, and that he wore the overcoat 
which he had exchanged years before for a 
blanket to keep her warm. 

There was a terrible want of spirit about 
Grinder Queery. Boys used to climb on to his 
stone roof with clods of damp earth in their 
hands, which they dropped down the chimney. 
Mysy was bedridden by this time, and the 


152 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


smoke threatened to choke her; so Cree, in- 
stead of chasing his persecutors, bargained 
with them. He gave them fly-hooks which he 
had busked himself, and when he had nothing 
left to give he tried to flatter them into deal- 
ing gently with Mysy by talking to them as 
men. One night it went through the town 
that Mysy now lay in bed all day listening for 
her summons to depart. According to her 
ideas this would come in the form of a tapping 
at the window, and their intention was to fore- 
stall the spirit. Dite Gow’s boy, who is now 
a grown man, was hoisted up to one of the lit- 
tle windows, and he has always thought of 
Mysy since as he saw her then for the last 
time. She lay sleeping, so far as he could see, 
and Cree sat by the fireside looking at her. 

Every one knew that there was seldom a fire 
in that house unless Mysy was cold. Cree 
seemed to think that the fire was getting low. 
In the little closet, which, with the kitchen, 
made up his house, was a corner shut off from 
the rest . of the room by a few boards, and be- 
hind this he kept his peats. There was a sim- 


CREE QXJEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 153 

ilar receptacle for potatoes in the kitchen. 
Cree wanted to get another peat for the fire 
without disturbing Mysy. First he took off 
his hoots, and made for the peats on tip-toe. 
His shadow was cast on the bed, however, so 
he next got down on his knees and crawled 
softly into the closet. With the peat in his 
hands he returned in the same way, glancing 
every moment at the’ bed where Mysy lay. 
Though Tammy Gow’s face was pressed against 
a broken window, he did not hear Cree putting 
that peat on the fire. Some say that Mysy 
heard, but pretended not to do so for her son’s 
sake ; that she realized the deception he played 
on her and had not the heart to undeceive 
him. But it would be too sad to believe that. 
The boys left Cree alone that night. 

The old weaver lived on alone in that soli- 
tary house after Mysy left him, and by and by 
the story went abroad that he was saving 
money. At first no one believed this except 
the man who told it, but there seemed after 
all to be something in it. You had only to hit 
Cree’s trouser pocket to hear the money chink- 


154 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


ing, for he was afraid to let it out of his clutch. 
Those who sat on dykes with him when his 
day’s labor was over said that the weaver kept 
his hand all the time in his pocket, and that 
they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard 
by letting it slip through his fingers. So there 
were boys who called “ Miser Queery” after 
him instead of Grinder, and asked him wheth- 
er he was saving up to keep himself from the 
workhouse. 

But we had all done Cree wrong. It came 
out on his death-bed what he had been storing 
up his money for. Grinder, according to the 
doctor, died of getting a good meal from a 
friend of his earlier days after being accus- 
tomed to starve on potatoes and a very little 
oatmeal indeed. The day before he died this 
friend sent him half a sovereign, and when 
Grinder saw it he sat up excitedly in his bed 
and pulled his corduroys from beneath his 
pillow. The woman who, out of kindness, 
attended him in his last illness, looked on cu- 
riously while Cree added the sixpences and 
coppers in his pocket to the half-sovereign. 


CREE QTJEERY AND MYSY DROLLY. 155 

After all they only made some two pounds, 
but a look of peace came into Cree’s eyes as 
he told the woman to take it all to a shop in 
the town. Nearly twelve years previously 
Jamie Lownie had lent him two pounds, and 
though the money was never asked for, it 
preyed on Cree’s mind that he was in debt. 
He paid off all he owed, and so Cree’s life 
was not, I think, a failure. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL. 

For two years it had been notorious in the 
square that Sam T Dickie was thinking of court- 
ing T’nowhead’s Bell, and that if little Sanders 
Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation 
of Alexander Alexander) went in for her, he 
might prove a formidable rival. Sam’l was a 
weaver in the Tenements, and Sanders a coal- 
carter, whose trade-mark was a bell on his 
horse’s neck that told when coal was coming. 
Being something of a public man, Sanders had 
not, perhaps, so high a social position as Sam T, 
but he had succeeded his father on the coal- 
cart, while the weaver had already tried sev- 
eral trades. It had always been against Sam’l, 
too, that once when the kirk was vacant he 
had advised the selection of the third minister 

who preached for it on the ground that it came 
156 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 157 

expensive to pay a large number of candidates. 
The scandal of the thing was hushed up, out 
of respect for his father, who was a God-fear- 
ing man, but SamT was known by it in Lang 
Tammas’ circle. The coal-carter was called 
Little Sanders to distinguish him from his fa- 
ther, who was not much more than half his 
size. He had grown up with the name, and 
its inapplicability now came home to nobody. 
Sam’l’s mother had been more far-seeing than 
Sanders’. Her man had been called Sammy 
all his life because it was the name he got as 
a boy, so when their eldest son was born she 
spoke of him as SamT while still in the cradle. 
The neighbors imitated her, and thus the young 
man had a better start in life than had been 
granted to Sammy, his father. 

It was Saturday evening — the night in the 
week when Auld Licht young men fell in love. 
Sam’l Dickie, wearing a blue glengarry bon- 
net with a red ball on the top, came to the 
door of a one-story house in the Tenements, 
and stood there wriggling, for he was in a suit 
of tweed for the first time that week, and did 


158 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


not feel at one with them. When his feeling 
of being a stranger to himself wore off, he 
looked up and down the road, which straggles 
between houses and gardens, and then, picking 
his way over the puddles, crossed to his father’s 
hen-house and sat down on it. He was now on 
his way to the square. 

Eppie Fargus was sitting on an adjoining 
dyke knitting stockings, and Sam’l looked at 
her for a time. 

“Is’t yersel, Eppie?” he said at last. 

“It’s a’ that,” said Eppie. 

“Hoo’s a’ wi’ ye?” asked Sam’l. 

“ We’re juist aff an’ on,” replied Eppie, cau- 
tiously. 

There was not much more to say, but as 
Sam’l sidled off the hen-house, he murmured 
politely, “Ay, ay.” In another minute he 
would have been fairly started, but Eppie re- 
sumed the conversation. 

“ Sam T,” she said, with a twinkle in her 
eye, “ye can tell Lisbeth Fargus I’ll likely 
be drappin’ in on her aboot Mununday or 
Teisday.” 


THE COURTING OF T NOW HE AD'S BELL. 159 

Lisbeth was sister to Eppie, and wife of Tam- 
mas McQuhatty, better known as T’nowhead, 
which was the name of his farm. She was 
thus Bell’s mistress. 

Sam’l leaned against the hen-house as if all 
his desire to depart had gone. 

“Hoo d’ye kin I’ll be at the T’nowhead the 
nicht?” he asked, grinning in anticipation. 

“Ou, I’se warrant ye’ll be after Bell,” said 
Eppie. 

“Am no sae sure o’ that,” said Sam’l, try- 
ing to leer. He was enjoying himself now. 

“Am no sure o’ that,” he repeated, for Ep- 
pie seemed lost in stitches. 

“ Sam’l!” 

“Ay.” 

“Ye’ll be speirin’ her sune noo, I dinna 
doot?” 

This took Sam’l, who had only been courting 
Bell for a year or two, a little aback. 

“Hoo d’ye mean, Eppie? ” he asked. 

“Maybe ye’ll do’t the nicht.” 

“Na, there’s nae hurry,” said Sam’l. 

“ Weel, we’re a’ coontin’ on’t, Sam’l.” 


160 


A ULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“Gae wa wi’ ye.” 

“ What for no? ” 

“Gae wa wi’ ye,” said Sam’l again. 

“Bell’s gei an’ fond o’ ye, Sam’l.” 

“Ay,” said Sam’l. 

“But am dootin’ ye’re a fell billy wi’ the 
lasses.” 

“Ay, oh, I d’na kin, moderate, moderate,” 
said Sam’l, in high delight. 

“I saw ye,” said Eppie, speaking with a 
wire in her mouth, “gae’in on terr’ble wi’ 
Mysy Haggart at the pump last Saturday.” 

“ We was juist amoosin’ oorsels, ” said Sam’l. 

“It’ll be nae amoosement to Mysy, ’’said Ep- 
pie, “gin ye brak her heart.” 

“Losh, Eppie,” said Sam’l, “I didna think 
o’ that.” 

“Ye maun kin weel, Sam’l, ’at there’s mony 
a lass wid jump at ye.” 

“Ou, weel,” said Sam’l, implying that a 
man must take these things as they come. 

“For ye’re a dainty chield to look at, Sam’l.” 

“ Do ye think so, Eppie? Ay, ay ; oh, I d’na 
kin am ony thing by the ordinar.” 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 1G1 

“Ye mayna be,” said Eppie, “but lasses 
doesna do to be ower partikler.” 

Sam’l resented this, and prepared to depart 
again. 

“Ye’ll no tell Bell that?” he asked, anx- 
iously. 

“Tell her what?” 

“Aboot me an’ Mysy.” 

“We’ll see hoo ye behave yersel, Sam’l.” 

“No ’at I care, Eppie ; ye can tell her gin ye 
like. I widna think twice o’ tellin’ her mysel.” 

“The Lord forgie ye for leein’, Sam’l,” said 
Eppie, as he disappeared down Tammy Tosh’s 
close. Here he came upon Henders Webster. 

“Ye’re late, Sam’l,” said Henders. 

“What for?” 

“Ou, I was thinkin’ ye wid be gaen the 
length o’ T’nowhead the nicht, an’ I saw San- 
ders Elshioner makkin’s wy there an oor syne. ” 

“Didye?” cried Sam’l, adding craftily, “but 
it’s naething to me.” 

“Tod, lad,” said Henders, “gin ye dinna 
buckle to, Sanders ’ll be carry in’ her off.” 

Sam’l flung back his head and passed on. 
ll 


162 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


“Sam’l!” cried Henders after him. 

“Ay,” said Sam’l, wheeling round. 

“Gie Bell a kiss frae me.” 

The full force of this joke struck neither all 
at once. Sam’l began to smile at it as he 
turned down the school-wynd, and it came 
upon Henders while he was in his garden feed- 
ing his ferret. Then he slapped his legs glee- 
fully, and explained the conceit to Will’um 
Byars, who went into the house and thought 
it over. 

There were twelve or twenty little groups 
of men in the square, which was lit by a flare 
of oil suspended over a cadger’s cart. How 
and again a staid young woman passed through 
the square with a basket on her arm, and if 
she had lingered long enough to give them 
time, some of the idlers would have addressed 
her. As it was, they gazed after her, and then 
grinned to each other. 

“Ay, Sam’l,” said two or three young men, 
as Sam’l joined them beneath the town -clock. 

“Ay, Davit,” replied Sam’l. 

This group was composed of some of the 


THE COURTING OF T ’ NO WHEAT) ’ S BELL. 163 


sharpest wits in Thrums, and it was not to be 
expected that they would let this opportunity 
pass. Perhaps when Sam’l joined them he 
knew what was in store for him. 

“Was ye lookin’ for T’nowhead’s Bell, 
Sarn’l?” asked one. 

“Or mebbe ye was wantin’ the minister?” 
suggested another, the same who had walked 
out twice with Chirsty Duff and not married 
her after all. 

Sam’l could not think of a good reply at the 
moment, so he laughed good-naturedly. 

“ Ondootedly she’s a snod bit crittur,” said 
Davit, archly. 

“An’ michty clever wi’ her fingers,” added 
Jamie Deuchars. 

“Man, I’ve thocht o’ makkin’ up to Bell 
mysel,” said Pete Ogle. “W id there be ony 
chance, think ye, Sam’l? ” 

“I’m thinkin’ she widna haeye for her first, 
Pete,” replied SamT, in one of those happy 
flashes that come to some men, “but there’s 
nae say in’ hut what she micht tak ye to finish 
up wi’.” 


164 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


The unexpectedness of this sally startled 
every one. Though Sam’l did not set up fora 
wit, however, like Davit, it was notorious that 
he could say a cutting thing once in a way. 

“Did }^e ever see Bell reddin’ up?” asked 
Pete, recovering from his overthrow. He was 
a man who bore no malice. 

“It’s a sicht,” said Sam’l, solemnly. 

“Hoo will that he? ” asked Jamie Deuchars. 

“It’s weel worth yer while,” said Pete, “to 
ging atower to the T’nowhead an’ see. Ye’ll 
mind the closed-in beds i’ the kitchen? Ay, 
weel, they’re a fell spoilt crew, T’nowhead ’s 
litlins, an’ no that aisy to manage. Th’ ither 
lasses Lisbeth’s hae’n had a michty trouble wi’ 
them. When they war i’ the middle o’ their 
reddin’ up the bairns wid come tumlin’ about 
the floor, hut, sal, I assure ye, Bell didna fash 
lang wi’ them. Did she, Sam’l?” 

“She did not,” said Sam’l, dropping into a 
fine mode of speech to add emphasis to his re- 
mark. 

“I’ll tell ye what she did,” said Pete to the 
others. “ She juist lifted up the litlins, twa at 


THE COURTING OF T ’ NO WHEA D ’ S BELL. 165 


a time, an’ flung them into the coffin-beds. 
Syne she snibbit the doors on them, an’ keepit 
them there till the floor was dry.” 

“ Ay, man, did she so?” said Davit, admir- 
ingly. 

“I’ve seen her do’t mysel,” said Sam’l. 

“There’s no a lassie maks better bannocks 
this side o’ Fetter Lums,” continued Pete. 

“Her mither tocht her that,” said Sam’l; 
“she was a gran’ han’ at the bakin’, Kitty 
Ogilvy.” 

“I’ve heard say,” remarked Jamie, putting 
it this way so as not to tie himself down to 
anything, “ ’at Bell’s scones is equal to Mag 
Lunan’s.” 

“So they are,” said Sam’l, almost fiercely. 

“I kin she’s a neat han’ at singein’ a hen,” 
said Pete. 

“An’ wi’t a’,” said Davit, “she’s a snod, 
canty hit stocky in her Sabbath claes.” 

“If ony thing, thick in the waist,” suggested 
Jamie. 

“I dinna see that,” said Sam’l. 

“I d’na care for her hair either,” continued 


166 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


Jamie, who was very nice in his tastes ; “ some- 
thing mair yallowchy wid be an improvement.” 

“A ’body kins,” growled Sam’l, “ ’at black 
hair’s the bonniest.” 

The others chuckled. 

“Puir Sam’l!” Pete said. 

Sam’l not being certain whether this should 
be received with a smile or a frown, opened his 
mouth wide as a kind of compromise. This 
was position one with him for thinking things 
over. 

Few Auld Lichts, as I have said, went the 
length of choosing a helpmate for themselves. 
One day a young man’s friends would see 
him mending the washing-tub of a maiden’s 
mother. They kept the joke until Saturday 
night, and then he learned from them what he 
had been after. It dazed him for a time, but 
in a year or so he grew accustomed to the idea, 
and they were then married. With a little 
help he fell in love just like other people. 

Sam’l was going the way of the others, but 
he found it difficult to come to the point. He 
only went courting once a week, and he could 


THE COURTING OF T NOW HE AD'S BELL. 167 

never take up the running at the place where 
he left off the Saturday before. Thus he had 
not, so far, made great headway. His method 
of making up to Bell had been to drop in at 
T’nowhead on Saturday nights and talk with 
the farmer about the rinderpest. 

The farm kitchen was Bell’s testimonial. 
Its chairs, tables, and stools were scoured by 
her to the whiteness of Kob Angus’ saw-mill 
boards, and the muslin blind on the window 
was starched like a child’s pinafore. Bell was 
brave, too, as well as energetic. Once Thrums 
had been overrun with thieves. It is now 
thought that there may have been only one, 
but he had the wicked cleverness of a gang. 
Such was his repute that there were weavers 
who spoke of locking their doors when they 
went from home. He was not very skilful, 
however, being generally caught, and when 
they said they knew he was a robber, he gave 
them their things back and went away. If 
they had given him time there is no doubt that 
he would have gone off with his plunder. One 
night he went to T’nowhead, and Bell, who 


168 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


slept in the kitchen, was awakened by the 
noise. She knew who it would be, so she rose 
and dressed herself, and went to look for him 
with a candle. The thief had not known what 
to do when he got in, and as it was very lonely 
he was glad to see Bell. She told him he 
ought to be ashamed of himself, and would not 
let him out by the door until he had taken off 
his boots so as not to soil the carpet. 

On this Saturday evening Sam’l stood his 
ground in the square, until by and by he found 
himself alone. There were other groups there 
still, hut his circle had melted away. They 
went separately, and no one said good-night. 
Each took himself off slowly, backing out of 
the group until he was fairly started. 

Sam’l looked about him, and then, seeing 
that the others had gone, walked round the 
town-house into the darkness of the brae that 
leads down and then up to the farm of T ’now- 
head. 

To get into the good graces of Lisbeth Far- 
gus you had to know her ways and humor 
them. Sam’l, who was a student of women, 


THE COURTING OF TNOWHEAD'S BELL. 169 


knew this, and so, instead of pushing the door 
open and walking in, he went through the 
rather ridiculous ceremony of knocking. San- 
ders Elshioner was also aware of this weak- 
ness of Lisbeth ’s, but though he often made 
up his mind to knock, the absurdity of the 
thing prevented his doing so when he reached 
the door. T’nowhead himself had never got 
used to his wife’s refined notions, and when 
any one knocked he always started to his 
feet, thinking there must be something 
wrong. 

Lisbeth came to the door, her expansive 
figure blocking the way in. 

“Sam’l,” she said. 

“ Lisbeth,” said Sam’l. 

He shook hands with the farmer’s wife, 
knowing that she liked it, but only said, “ Ay, 
Bell,” to his sweetheart, “ Ay, T’nowhead,” to 
McQuhatty, and “It’s yersel, Sanders,” to his 
rival. 

They were all sitting round the fire; T’now- 
head, with his feet on the ribs*, wondering why 
he felt so warm, and Bell darned a stocking, 


170 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


while Lisbeth kept an eye on a goblet full of 
potatoes. 

“Sit into the fire, Sam’l,” said the farmer, 
not, however, making way for him. 

“N a, na,” said Sam’l; “I’m to bide nae 
time.” Then he sat into the fire. His face 
was turned away from Bell, and when she 
spoke he answered her without looking round. 
Sam’l felt a little anxious. Sanders Elshioner, 
who had one leg shorter than the other, hut 
looked well when sitting, seemed suspiciously 
at home. He asked Bell questions out of his 
own head, which was beyond Sam’l, and once 
he said something to her in such a low voice 
that the others could not catch it. T’nowhead 
asked curiously what it was, and Sanders ex- 
plained that he had only said, “Ay, Bell, the 
morn’s the Sabbath.” There was nothing 
startling in this, hut Sam’l did not like it. He 
began to wonder if he were too late, and had 
he seen his opportunity would have told Bell 
of a nasty rumor that Sanders intended to go 
over to the Frere Church if they would make 
him kirk-officer. 


THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD'S BELL. 171 


Sam’l had the good-will of T’nowhead’s wife, 
who liked a polite man. Sanders did his best, 
but from want of practice he constantly made 
mistakes. To-night, for instance, he wore his 
hat in the house because he did not like to put 
up his hand and take it off. T’nowhead had 
not taken his off either, but that was because 
he meant to go out by and by and lock the 
byre door. It was impossible to say which of 
her lovers Bell preferred. The proper course 
w T ith an Auld Licht lassie was to prefer the 
man who proposed to her. 

“ Ye’ll bide a wee, an’ hae something to 
eat?” Lisbeth asked SamT, with her eyes on 
the goblet. 

“No, I thank ye,” said SamT, with true 
gentility. 

“Ye’ll better.” 

“I dinna think it.” 

“Hoots aye; what’s to hender ye? ” 

“ Weel, since ye’re sae pressin’, I’ll bide.” 

No one asked Sanders to stay. Bell could 
not, for she was but the servant, and T’now- 
head knew that the kick his wife had given 


m 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


him meant that he was not to do so either. 
Sanders whistled to show that he was not un- 
comfortable. 

“Ay, then, I’ll be stappin’ ower the brae,” 
he said at last. 

He did not go, however. There was suffi- 
cient pride in him to get him off his chair, but 
* 

only slowly, for he had to get accustomed to 
the notion of going. At intervals of two or 
three minutes he remarked that he must now 
be going. In the same circumstances Sam’l 
would have acted similarly. For a Thrums 
man, it is one of the hardest things in life to 
get away from anywhere. 

At last Lisbeth caw that something must be 
done. The potatoes were burning, and T’now- 
head had an invitation on his tongue. 

“Yes, I’ll hae to be movin’,” said Sanders, 
hopelessly, for the fifth time. 

“Guid nicht to ye, then, Sanders,” said Lis- 
beth. “Gie the door a fling-to, ahent ye.” 

Sanders, with a mighty effort, pulled him- 
self together. He looked boldly at Bell, and 
then took off his hat carefully. Sam’l saw 


THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL. 173 


with misgivings that there was something in 
it which was not a handkerchief. It was a 
paper bag glittering with gold braid, and con- 
tained such an assortment of sweets as lads 
bought for their lasses on the Muckle Friday. 

“Hae, Bell,” said Sanders, handing the bag 
to Bell in an off-hand way as if it were but a 
trifle. Nevertheless he was a little excited, for 
he went off without saying good-night. 

No one spoke. Bell’s face was crimson. 
T’nowhead fidgeted on his chair, and Lisbeth 
looked at Sam’l. The weaver was strangely 
calm and collected, though he would have 
liked to know whether this was a proposal. 

“ Sit in by to the table, Sam’l,” said Lisbeth, 
trying to look as if things were as they had 
been before. 

She put a saucerful of butter, salt, and pep- 
per near the fire to melt, for melted butter is 
the shoeing-horn that helps over a meal of po- 
tatoes. Sam’l, however, saw what the hour 
required, and jumping up, he seized his bon- 
net. 

“Hing the tatties higher up the joist, Lis- 


174 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


beth,” he said with dignity; “I’se be back in 
ten meenits.” 

He hurried out of the house, leaving the 
others looking at each other. 

“ What do ye think? ” asked Lisbeth. 

“I d’na kin,” faltered Bell. 

“Thae tatties is lang o’ cornin’ to the boil,” 
said T’ now head. 

In some circles a lover who behaved like 
Sam’l would have been suspected of intent upon 
his rival’s life, but neither Bell nor Lisbeth 
did the weaver that injustice. In a case of 
this kind it does not much matter what T ’now- 
head thought. 

The ten minutes had barely passed when 
Sam’l was back in the farm kitchen. He was 
too flurried to knock this time, and, indeed, 
Lisbeth did not expect it of him. 

“ Bell, hae ! ” he cried, handing his sweet- 
heart a tinsel bag twice the size of Sanders’ gift. 

“ Losh preserve’s !” exclaimed Lisbeth ; “ I’se 
warrant there’s a shillin’s worth.” 

“There’s a’ that, Lisbeth — an’ mair,” said 
Sam’l firmly. 


THE COURTING OF T NOWHEAH S BELL. 175 

“I thank ye, Sam’l,” said Bell, feeling an 
unwonted elation as she gazed at the two paper 
bags in her lap. 

“ Ye’re ower extravegint, Sam’l,” Lisbeth 
said. 

“Not at all,” said Sam’l; “not at all. But 
I widna advise ye to eat thae ither anes, 
Bell — they’re second quality.” 

Bell drew back a step from Sam’l. 

“ How do ye kin? ” asked the farmer shortly, 
for he liked Sanders. 

“I speired i’ the shop,” said Sam’l. 

The goblet was placed on a broken plate on 
the table with the saucer beside it, and Sam’l, 
like the others, helped himself. What he did 
was to take potatoes from the pot with his fin- 
gers, peel off their coats, and then dip them 
into the butter. Lisbeth would have liked to 
provide knives and forks, but she knew that be- 
yond a certain point T’nowhead was master in 
his own house. As for Sam’l, he felt victory in 
his hands, and began to think that he had 
gone too far. 

In the mean time Sanders, little witting that 


176 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


Sam’l had trumped his trick, was sauntering 
along the kirk-wynd with his hat on the side 
of his head. Fortunately he did not meet the 
minister. 

The courting of T’nowhead’s Bell reached 
its crisis one Sabbath about a month after the 
events above recorded. The minister was in 
great force that day, but it is no part of mine 
to tell how he bore himself. I was there, and 
am not likely to forget the scene. It was a 
fateful Sabbath for T’nowhead’s Bell and her 
swains, and destined to be remembered for the 
painful scandal which they perpetrated in their 
passion. 

Bell was not in the kirk. There being an 
infant of six months in the house it was a 
question of either Lisbeth or the lassie’s stay- 
ing at home with him, and though Lisbeth 
was unselfish in a general way, she could not 
resist the delight of going to church. She had 
nine children besides the baby, and being but 
a woman, it was the pride of her life to march 
them into the T’nowhead pew, so well watched 
that they dared not misbehave, and so tightly 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD’S BELL. 177 

packed that they could not fall. The congre- 
gation looked at that pew, the mothers envi- 
ously, when they sang the lines — 

“ Jerusalem like a city is 
Compactly built together. ” 

The first half of the service had been gone 
through on this particular Sunday without 
anything remarkable happening. It was at 
the end of the psalm which preceded the ser- 
mon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the 
door, lowered his head until it was no higher 
than the pews, and in that attitude, looking 
almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of 
the church. In their eagerness to be at the 
sermon many of the congregation did not 
notice him, and those who did put the matter 
by in their minds for future investigation. 
Sam’l, however, could not take it so coolly. 
From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders 
disappear, and his mind misgave him. With 
the true lover’s instinct he understood it all. 
Sanders had been struck by the fine turn-out 
in the T’nowhead pew. Bell was alone at the 

farm. What an opportunity to work one’s 
12 


178 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


way up to a proposal ! T’nowhead was so over- 
run with children that such a chance seldom 
occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, 
doubtless, was off to propose, and he, Sam’l, 
was left behind. 

The suspense was terrible. Sam’l and San- 
ders had both known all along that Bell would 
take the first of the two who asked her. Even 
those who thought her proud admitted that 
she was modest. Bitterly the weaver repented 
having waited so long. Now it was too late. 
In ten minutes Sanders would be at T’now- 
head; in an hour all would be over. Sam’l 
rose to his feet in a daze. His mother pulled 
him down by the coat-tail, and his father shook 
him, thinking he was walking in his sleep. 
He tottered past them, however, hurried up 
the aisle, which was so narrow that Dan’l Ross 
could only reach his seat by walking sideways, 
and was gone before the minister could do 
more than stop in the middle of a whirl and 
gape in horror after him. 

A number of the congregation felt that day 
the advantage of sitting in the laft. What 


THE COURTING OF TNOWHEAD'S BELL. 179 


was a mystery to those downstairs was revealed 
to them. From the gallery windows they had 
a fine open view to the south; and as Sam’l 
took the common, which was a short cut 
though a steep ascent, to T’nowhead, he was 
never out of their line of vision. Sanders was 
not to be seen, but they guessed rightly the 
reason why. Thinking he had ample time, 
he had gone round by the main road to save 
his boots — perhaps a little scared by what was 
coming. Sam’l’s design was to forestall him 
by taking the shorter path over the burn and 
up the common ty. 

It was a race for a wife, and several on- 
lookers in the gallery braved the minister’s 
displeasure to see who won. Those who fa- 
vored Sam’l’s suit exultingly saw him leap the 
stream, while the friends of Sanders fixed their 
eyes on the top of the common where it ran 
into the road. Sanders must come into sight 
there, and the one who reached this point first 
would get Bell. 

As Auld Lichts do not walk abroad on the 
Sabbath, Sanders would probably not be de- 


180 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


layed. The chances were in his favor. Had 
it been any other day in the week Sam’l might 
have run. So some of the congregation in the 
gallery were thinking, when suddenly they 
saw him bend low and then take to his heels. 
He had caught sight of Sanders’ head bobbing 
over the hedge that separated the road from 
the common, and feared that Sanders might 
see him. The congregation who could crane 
their necks sufficiently saw a black object, 
which they guessed to he the carter’s hat, 
crawling along the hedge-top. For a moment 
it was motionless, and then it shot ahead. 
The rivals had seen each other. It was now a 
hot race. Sam’l, dissembling no longer, clat- 
tered up the common, becoming smaller and 
smaller to the on-lookers as he neared the top. 
More than one person in the gallery almost 
rose to their feet in their excitement. SamT 
had it. No, Sanders was in front. Then the 
two figures disappeared from view. They 
seemed to run into each other at the top of 
the brae, and no one could say who was first. 
The congregation looked at one another. Some 


THE COURTING OF T’NOWHEAD’S BELL. 181 

of them perspired. But the minister held on 
his course. 

Sam’l had just been in time to cut Sanders 
out. It was the weaver’s saving that Sanders 
saw this when his rival turned the corner ; for 
Sam’l was sadly blown. Sanders took in the 
situation and gave in at once. The last hun- 
dred yards of the distance he covered at his 
leisure, and when he arrived at his destination 
he did not go in. It was a fine afternoon for 
the time of year, and he went round to have a 
look at the pig, about which T’nowhead was a 
little sinfully puffed up. 

“ Ay,” said Sanders, digging his fingers crit- 
ically into the grunting animal; “quite so.” 

“Grumph,” said the pig, getting reluctantly 
to his feet. 

“Ou, ay; yes,” said Sanders, thoughtfully. 

Then he sat down on the edge of the sty, and 
looked long and silently at an empty bucket. 
But whether his thoughts were of T ’now- 
head’s Bell, whom he had lost forever, or of 
the food the farmer fed his pig on, is not 
known. 


182 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“Lord preserve’s! Are ye no at the kirk?” 
cried Bell, nearly dropping the baby as Sam’l 
broke into the room. 

“Bell!” cried Sam’l. 

Then T’nowhead’s Bell knew that her hour 
had come. 

“Sam’l,” she faltered. 

“Will ye hae’s, Bell?” demanded SamT, 
glaring at her sheepishly. 

“Ay,” answered Bell. 

Sam’l fell into a chair. 

“Bring’s a drink o’ water, Bell,” he said. 
But Bell thought the occasion required milk, 
and there was none in the kitchen. She went 
out to the byre, still with the baby in her arms, 
and saw Sanders Elshioner sitting gloomily on 
the pig-sty. 

“ Weel, Bell,” said Sanders. 

“I thocht ye’d been at the kirk, Sanders,” 
said Bell. 

Then there was a silence between them. 

“Has SamT speired ye, Bell?” asked San- 
ders stolidly. 

“Ay,” said Bell again, and this time thero 


THE COURTING OF TNOWHEAD'S BELL. 183 

was a tear in her eye. Sanders was little bet- 
ter than an “orra man,” and Sam’l was a 
weaver, and yet — But it was too late now. 
Sanders gave the pig a vicious poke with a 
stick, and when it had ceased to grunt, Bell 
was back in the kitchen. She had forgotten 
about the milk, however, and Sam’l only got 
water after all. 

In after days, when the story of Bell’s woo- 
ing was told, there were some who held that 
the circumstances would have almost justified 
the lassie in giving Sam’l the go-by. But these 
perhaps forgot that her other lover was in the 
same predicament as the accepted one — that of 
the two, indeed, he was the more to blame, 
for he set off to T’nowhead on the Sabbath of 
his own accord, while Sam’l only ran after 
him. And then there is no one to say for cer- 
tain whether Bell heard of her suitors’ delin- 
quencies until Lisbeth’s return from the kirk. 
Sam’l could never remember whether he told 
her, and Bell was not sure whether, if he did, 
she took it in. Sanders was greatly in de- 
mand for weeks after to tell what he knew of 


184 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


the affair, but though he was twice asked to 
tea to the manse among the trees, and sub- 
jected thereafter to ministerial cross-exam- 
inations, this is all he told. He remained at 
the pig-sty until Sam’l left the farm, when he 
joined him at the top of the brae, and they 
went home together. 

“It’s yersel, Sanders,” said Sam’l. 

“It is so, Sam’l,” said Sanders. 

“Very cauld,” said Sam’l. 

“Blawy,” assented Sanders. 

After a pause — 

“Sam’l,” said Sanders. 

“Ay.” 

“I’m hearin’ ye’re to be mairit.” 

“Ay.” 

“ Weel, Sam’l, she’s a snod bit lassie.” 

“Thank ye,” said Sam’l. 

“I had ance a kin’ o’ notion o’ Bell mysel,” 
continued Sanders. 

“Ye had?” 

“Yes, Sam’l; but I thocht better o’t.” 

“Hood’ye mean?” asked Sam’l, a little anx- 
iously. 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 185 

“ Weel, Sam’l, mairitch is a terrible respon- 
sibeelity.” 

“It is so,” said Sam’l, wincing. 

“An’ no the thing to tak up withoot con- 
seederation. ” 

“But it’s a blessed and honorable state, San- 
ders; ye’ve heard the minister on’t.” 

“They say,” continued the relentless San- 
ders, “ ’at the minister doesna get on sair wi’ 
the wife himsel.” 

“So they do,” cried Sam’l, with a sinking 
at the heart. 

“I’ve been telt,” Sanders went on, “’at gin 
ye can get the upper han’ o’ the wife for a 
while at first, there’s the mair chance o’ a har- 
monious exeestence.” 

“Bell’s no the lassie,” said Sam’l appeal- 
ingly, “to thwart her man.” 

Sanders smiled. 

“D’ye think she is, Sanders?” 

“ Weel, Sam’l, I d’na want to fluster ye, but 
she’s been ower lang wi’ Lisbeth Fargus no to 
hae learnt her ways. An a ’body kins what a 
life T’nowhead has wi’ her.” 


186 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS . 


“Guid sake, Sanders, hoo did ye no speak o’ 
this afore?” 

“I thocht ye kent o’t, SamT.” 

They had now reached the square, and the 
U. P. kirk was coming out. The Auld Licht 
kirk would be half an hour yet. 

“But, Sanders,” said Sam’l, brightening 
up, “ye was on yer wy to spier her yer- 
sel.” 

“I was, Sam’l,” said Sanders, “and I canna 
but be thankfu’ ye was ower quick for’s.” 

“Gin’t hadna been you,” said Sam’l, “I wid 
never hae thocht o’t.” 

“ I’m sayin’ naething agin Bell, ” pursued the 
other, “but, man Sam’l, a body should be 
mair deleeberate in a thing o’ the kind.” 

“It was michty hurried,” said Sam’l, wo- 
fully. 

“It’s a serious thing to spier a lassie,” said 
Sanders. 

“It’s an awfu’ thing,” said Sam’l. 

“But we’ll hope for the best, ’’added Sanders 
in a hopeless voice. 

They were close to the Tenements now, and 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 187 

Sam’l looked as if he were on his way to be 
hanged. 

“Sam’l!” 

“Ay, Sanders.” 

“Did ye — did ye kiss her, Sam’l?” 

“Na.” 

“Hoo?” 

“There’s was varra little time, Sanders.” 

“Half an ’oor,” said Sanders. 

“Was there? Man Sanders, to tell ye the 
truth, I never thocht o’t.” 

Then the soul of Sanders Elshioner was filled 
with contempt for Sam’l Dickie. 

The scandal blew over. At first it was ex- 
pected that the minister would interfere to 
prevent the union, but beyond intimating from 
the pulpit that the souls of Sabbath-breakers 
were beyond praying for, and then praying for 
Sam’l and Sanders at great length, with a 
word thrown in for Bell, he let things take 
their course. Some said it was because he 
was always frightened lest his young men 
should intermarry with other denominations, 
but Sanders explained it differently to Sam’l. 


188 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“I hav’na a word to say agin the minister,” 
he said; “they’re gran’ prayers, but, Sam’l, 
he’s a mairit man hims^el.” 

“He’s a’ the better for that, Sanders, isna 
he?” 

“Do ye no see,” asked Sanders compassion- 
ately, “ ’at he’s try in’ to mak the best o’t? ” 

“Oh, Sanders, man!” said Sam’l. 

“Cheer up, Sam’l,” said Sanders, “it’ll sune 
be ower.” 

Their having been rival suitors had not 
interfered with their friendship. On the con- 
trary, while they had hitherto been mere ac- 
quaintances, they became inseparables as the 
wedding-day drew near. It was noticed that 
they had much to say to each other, and that 
when they could not get a room to themselves 
they wandered about together in the church- 
yard. When Sam’l had anything to tell Bell 
he sent Sanders to tell it, and Sanders did as 
he was bid. There was nothing that he would 
not have done for Sam’l. 

The more obliging Sanders was, however, 
the sadder Sam’l grew. He never laughed 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 189 


now on Saturdays, and sometimes his loom was 
silent half the day. Sam’l felt that Sanders’ 
was the kindness of a friend for a dying man. 

It was to he a penny wedding, and Lisbeth 
Fargus said it was delicacy that made Sam’l 
superintend the fitting-up of the barn by dep- 
uty. Once he came to see it in person, but he 
looked so ill that Sanders had to see him home. 
This was on the Thursday afternoon, and the 
wedding was fixed for Friday. 

“Sanders, Sanders,” said Sam’l, in a voice 
strangely unlike his own, “it’ll a’ be ower by 
this time the morn.” 

“It will,” said Sanders. 

“If I had only kent her langer,” continued 
Sam’l. 

“It wid hae been safer,” said Sanders. 

“ Did ye see the y allow floor in Bell’s bon- 
net?” asked the accepted swain. 

“Ay,” said Sanders reluctantly. 

“I’m dootin’ — I’m sair dootin’ she’s but a 
flichty, light-hearted crittur after a’.” 

“I had ay my suspeecions o’t,” said San- 
ders. 


190 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“Ye hae kent her langer than me,” said 
Sam’l. 

“ Yes,” said Sanders, “but there’s nae get- 
tin’ at the heart o’ women. Man, Sam’l, 
they’re desperate cunnin’.” 

“I’m dootin’t; I’m sair dootin’t.” 

“It’ll be a warnin’ to ye, Sam’l, no to be in 
sic a hurry i’ the futur,” said Sanders. 

Sam’l groaned. 

“Ye’ll he gaein up to the manse to arrange 
wi’ the minister the morn’s mornin’,” contin- 
ued Sanders, in a subdued voice. 

Sam’l looked wistfully at his friend. 

“I canna do’t, Sanders,” he said, “I canna 
do’t.” 

“Ye maun,” said Sanders. 

“It’s aisy to speak,” retorted Sam’l bitterly. 

“We have a’ oor troubles, Sam’l,” said San- 
ders soothingly, “an’ every man maun bear 
his ain burdens. Johnny Davie’s wife’s dead, 
an’ he’s no repinin’.” 

“Ay,” said Sam’l, “but a death’s no a mair- 
itch. We hae haen deaths in our family too.” 

“It may a’ be for the best,” added Sanders, 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 191 


“ an’ there wid be a michty talk i’ the hale 
country-side gin ye didna ging to the minister 
like a man.” 

“ I maun hae langer to think o’t,” said Sam’l. 

“Bell’s mairitch is the morn,” said Sanders 
decisively. 

Sam’l glanced up with a wild look in his 
eyes. 

“Sanders!” he cried. 

“Sam’l!” 

“Ye hae been a guid friend to me, Sanders, 
in this sair affliction.” 

“Nothing ava,” said Sanders; “dount men- 
tion’d.” 

“But, Sanders, ye canna deny but what 
your rinnin oot o’ the kirk that awfu’ day was 
at the bottom o’d a’.” 

“It was so,” said Sanders bravely. 

“An’ ye used to be fond o’ Bell, Sanders.” 

“I dinna deny’t.” 

“Sanders, laddie,” said Sam’l, bending for- 
ward and speaking in a wheedling voice, “I 
aye thocht it was you she likit.” 

“I had some sic idea mysel,” said Sanders. 


192 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


“Sanders, I canna think to pairt twa fowk 
sae weel suited to ane anither as you an’ Bell.” 

“Canna ye, Sam ’1? ” 

“She wid mak ye a guid wife, Sanders. I 
hae studied her weel, and she’s a thrifty, 
douce, clever lassie. Sanders, there’s no the 
like o’ her. Mony a time, Sanders, I hae said 
to mysel, ‘There’s a lass ony man micht he 
prood to tak. ’ A ’body says the same, Sanders. 
There’s nae risk ava, man: nane to speak o’. 
Tak her, laddie, tak her, Sanders; it’s a grand 
chance, Sanders. She’s yours for the spierin’. 
I’ll gie her up, Sanders.” 

“Will ye, though?” said Sanders. 

“What d’ye think? ” asked Sam’l. 

“If ye wid rayther,” said Sanders politely. 

“ There’s my ban’ on’t,” said Sam’l. “ Bless 
ye, Sanders; ye’ve been a true frien’ to me.” 

Then they shook hands for the first time in 
their lives ; and soon afterward Sanders struck 
up the brae to T’nowhead. 

Next morning Sanders Elshioner, who had 
been very busy the night before, put on his 
Sabbath clothes and strolled up to the manse. 


THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL. 193 

“But — but where is Sam’l?” asked the min- 
ister; “I must see himself. ” 

“It’s a new arrangement,” said Sanders. 

“ What do you mean, Sanders? ” 

“Bell’s to marry me,” explained Sanders. 
“But — but what does Sam’l say?” 

“He’s willin’,” said Sanders. 

“And Bell?” 

“She’s willin’, too. She prefers ’t.” 

“It is unusual,” said the minister. 

“It’s a’ richt,” said Sanders. 

“Well, you know best,” said the minister. 
“You see the hoose was taen, at ony rate,” 
continued Sanders. “An’ I’ll juist ging in 
til’t instead o’ Sam’l.” 

“Quite so.” 

“An’ I cudna think to disappoint the lassie.” 
“Your sentiments do you credit, Sanders,” 
said the minister; “but I hope you do not en- 
ter upon the blessed state of matrimony with- 
out full consideration of its responsibilities. 
It is a serious business, marriage.” 

“It’s a’ that,” said Sanders, “but I’m 

willin’ to stan’ the risk.” 

13 . 


194 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


So, as soon as it could be done, Sanders El- 
shioner took to wife T’nowhead’s Bell, and I 
remember seeing Sam’l Dickie trying to dance 
at the penny wedding. 

Years afterward it was said in Thrums that 
SamT had treated Bell badly, but he was never 
sure about it himself. 

“ It was a near thing — a michty near thing,” 
he admitted in the square. 

“They say,” some other weaver would re- 
mark, “ ’at it was you Bell liked best.” 

“I d’na kin,” SamT would reply, “but 
there’s nae doot the lassie was fell fond o’ 
me. Ou, a mere passin’ fancy’s ye micht 
say.” 


f 


CHAPTER IX. 


DAYIT LUNAN’S POLITICAL REMINISCENCES. 

When an election -day conies round now, it 
takes me back to the time of 1832. I would 
be eight or ten year old at that time. James 
Strachan was at the door by five o’clock in 
the morning in his Sabbath clothes, by arrange- 
ment. We was to go up to the hill to see 
them building the bonfire. Moreover, there 
was word that Mr. Scrimgour was to be there 
tossing pennies, just like at a marriage. I 
was awakened before that by my mother at 
the pans and bowls. I have always associated 
elections since that time with jelly-making; 
for just as my mother would fill the cups and 
tankers and bowls with jelly to save cans, she 
was emptying the pots and pans to make way 
for the ale and porter. James and me was 

to help to carry it home from the square — him 
195 


196 


MILD LIGHT IDYLS. 


in the pitcher and me in a flagon, because I 
was silly for my age and not strong in the 
arms. 

It was a very blowy morning, though the 
rain kept off, and what part of the bonfire had 
been built already was found scattered to the 
winds. Before we rose a great mass of folk 
was getting the barrels and things together 
again ; but some of them was never recovered, 
and suspicion pointed to William Geddes, it 
being well known that William would not hes- 
itate to carry off anything if unobserved. 
More by token Chirsty Lamby had seen him 
rolling home a harrowful of firewood early in 
the morning, her having risen to hold cold wa- 
ter in her mouth, being down with the tooth- 
ache. When we got up to the hill everybody 
was making for the quarry, which being more 
sheltered was now thought to be a better place 
for the bonfire. The masons had struck work, 
it being a general holiday in the whole coun- 
tryside. There was a great commotion of peo- 
ple, all fine dressed and mostly with glengarry 
bonnets; and me and James was well acquaint 


POLITICAL REMINISCENCES. 197 

with them, though mostly weavers and the 
like and not my father’s equal. Mr. Scrimgour 
was not there himself ; hut there was a small 
active body in his room as tossed the money 
for him fair enough ; though not so liberally 
as was expected, being mostly ha’pence where 
pennies was looked for. Such was not my 
father’s opinion, and him and a few others 
only had a vote. He considered it was a waste 
of money giving to them that had no vote and 
so taking out of other folks’ mouths; but the 
little man said it kept everybody in good-humor 
and made Mr. Scrimgour popular. He was 
an extraordinary affable man and very spirity, 
running about to waste no time in walking, 
and gave me a shilling, saying to me to be a 
truthful boy and tell my father. He did not 
give James anything, him being an orphan, 
but clapped his head and said he was a fine 
boy. 

The captain was to vote for the bill if he 
got in, the which he did. It was the captain 
was to give the ale' and the porter in the square 
like a true gentleman. My father gave a kind 


198 


AULD LICHT IDYLS / 


of laugh when I let him see my shilling, and 
said he would keep care of it for me; and 
sorry I was I let him get it, me never seeing 
the face of it again to this day. Me and James 
was much annoyed with the women, especial^ 
Kitty Davie, always pushing in when there 
was tossing, and tearing the very ha’pence out 
of our hands : us not caring so much about the 
money, hut humiliated to see women mixing 
up in politics. By the time the topmost barrel 
was on the bonfire there was a great smell of 
whiskey in the quarry, it being a confined 
place. My father had been against the bon- 
fire being in the quarry, arguing that the wind 
on the hill would have carried off the smell of 
the whiskey ; but Peter Tosh said they did not 
want the smell carried off ; it would be agree- 
able to the masons for weeks to come. Except 
among the women there was no fighting nor 
wrangling at the quarry, but all in fine spirits. 

I misremember now whether it was Mr. 
Scrimgour or the captain that took the fancy 
to my father’s pigs; but it was this day, at 
any rate, that the captain sent him the game- 


POLITICAL REMINISCENCES. 


199 


cock. Whichever one it was that fancied the 
litter of pigs, nothing would content him hut 
to buy them, which he did at thirty shillings 
each, being the best bargain ever my father 
made. Nevertheless I’m thinking he was 
windier of the cock. The captain, who was a 
local man when not with his regiment, had the 
grandest collection of fighting-cocks in the 
county, and sometimes came into the town to 
try them against the town cocks. I mind well 
the large wicker cage in which they were con- 
veyed from place to place, and never without 
the captain near at hand. My father had a 
cock that beat all the other town cocks at the 
cock-fight at our school, which was superin- 
tended by the elder of the kirk to see fair play ; 
but the which died of its wounds the next day 
but one. This was a great grief to my father, 
it having been challenged to fight the cap- 
tain’s cock. Therefore it was very considerate 
of the captain to make my father a present of 
his bird ; father, in compliment to him, chang- 
ing its name from the “ Deil” to the “ Captain.” 

During the forenoon, and I think until well 


200 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


on in the day, Janies and me was busy with 
the pitcher and the flagon. The proceedings 
in the square, however, was not so well con- 
ducted as in the quarry, many of the folk there 
assembled showing a mean and grasping spirit. 
The captain had given orders that there was 
to be no stint of ale and porter, and neither 
there was ; hut much of it lost through hasti- 
ness. Great barrels was hurled into the mid- 
dle of the square, where the country wives sat 
with their eggs and butter on market-day, and 
was quickly stove in with an axe or paving- 
stone or whatever came handy. Sometimes 
they would break into the barrel at different 
points ; and then, when they tilted it up to get 
the ale out at one hole, it gushed out at the 
bottom till the square was flooded. My mother 
was fair disgusted when told by me and James 
of the waste of good, liquor. It is gospel truth 
I speak when I say I mind well of seeing Sing- 
er Davie catching the porter in a pan as it 
ran down the sire, and when the pan was full 
to overflowing, putting his mouth to the 
stream and drinking till he was as full as the 


POLITICAL REMINISCENCES. 201 

pan. Most of the men, however, stuck to the 
barrels, the drink running in the street being 
ale and porter mixed, and left it to the women 
and. the young folk to do the carrying. Susy 
M 5 Queen brought as many pans as she could 
collect on a barrow, and was* filling them all 
with porter, rejecting the ale ; but indignation 
was aroused against her, and as fast as she 
filled the others emptied. 

My father scorned to go to the square to 
drink ale and porter with the crowd, having 
the election on his mind and him to vote. 
Nevertheless he instructed me and James to 
keep up a brisk trade with the pans, and run 
back across the gardens in case we met dishon- 
est folk in the streets who might drink the ale. 
Also, said my father, we was to let the ex- 
cesses of our neighbors be a warning in sobriety 
to us ; enough being as good as a feast, except 
when you can store it up for the winter. By 
and by my mother thought it was not safe me 
being in the streets with so many wild men 
about, and would have sent James himself, 
him being an orphan and hardier ; but this I 


202 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


did not like, but, running out, did not come 
back for long enough. There is no doubt that 
the music was to blame for firing the men’s 
blood, and the result most disgraceful fighting 
with no object in view. There was three fid- 
dlers and two at the flute, most of them blind, 
but not the less dangerous on that account; 
and they kept the town in a ferment, even 
playing the country-folk home to the farms, 
followed by bands of towns-folk. They were 
a quarrelsome set, the ploughmen and others ; 
and it was generally admitted in the town that 
their overbearing behavior was responsible for 
the fights. I mind them being driven out of 
the square, stones flying thick; also some 
stand-up fights with sticks, and others fair 
enough with fists. The worst fight I did not 
see. It took place in a field. At first it was 
only between two who had been miscalling one 
another; but there was many looking on, and 
when the town man was like getting the worst 
of it the others set to, and a most heathenish 
fray with no sense in it ensued. One man had 
his arm broken. I mind Hobart the bellman 


POLITICAL REMINISCENCES. 


203 


going about ringing his bell and telling all per- 
sons to get within doors; but little attention 
was paid to him, it being notorious that 
Snecky had had a fight earlier in the day 
himself. 

When James was fighting in the field, ac- 
cording to his own account, I had the honor 
of dining with the electors who voted for the 
captain, him paying all expenses. It was a 
lucky accident my mother sending me to the 
town-house, where the dinner came off, to try 
to get my father home at a decent hour, me 
having a remarkable power over him when in 
liquor, but at no other time. They were very 
jolly, however, and insisted on my drinking 
the captain’s health and eating more than was 
safe. My father got it next day from my 
mother for this ; and so would I myself, but it 
was several days before I left my bed, com- 
pletely knocked up as I was with the excite- 
ment and one thing or another. The bonfire, 
which was built to celebrate the election of 
Mr. Scrimgour, was set ablaze, though I did 
not see it, in honor of the election of the cap- 


204 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


tain ; it being thought a pity to lose it, as no 
doubt it would have been. That is about all I 
remember of the celebrated election of ’32 when 
the Reform Bill was passed. 


CHAPTER X. 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 

They were a very old family with whom 
Snecky Hobart, the bellman, lodged. Their 
favorite dissipation, when their looms had 
come to rest, was a dander through the kirk- 
yard. They dressed for it: the three young 
ones in their rusty blacks ; the patriarch in his 
old blue coat, velvet knee-breeches, and broad 
blue bonnet; and often of an evening I have 
met them moving from grave to grave. By 
this time the old man was nearly ninety, and 
the young ones averaged sixty. They read out 
the inscriptions on the tombstones in a sol- 
emn drone, and their father added his reminis- 
cences. He never failed them. Since the 
beginning of the century he had not missed a 
funeral, and his children felt that he was a 

great example. Sire and sons returned from 
205 


206 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


the cemetery invigorated for their daily labors. 
If one of them happened to start a dozen yards 
behind the others, he never thought of making 
up the distance. If his foot struck against a 
stone, he came to a dead stop ; when he discov- 
ered that he had stopped, he set off again. 

A high wall shut off this old family’s house 
and garden from the clatter of Thrums, a wall 
that gave Snecky some trouble before he went 
to live within it. I speak from personal knowl- 
edge. One spring morning, before the school- 
house was built, I was assisting the patriarch 
to divest the gaunt garden pump of its winter 
suit of straw. I was taking a drink, I remem- 
ber, my palm over the mouth of the wooden 
spout and my mouth at the gimlet-hole above, 
when a leg appeared above the corner of the 
wall against which the hen-house was built. 
Two hands followed, clutching desperately at 
the uneven stones. Then the leg worked as if 
it were turning a grindstone, and next mo- 
ment Snecky was sitting breathlessly on the 
dyke. From this to the hen-house, whose roof 
was of “divets,” the descent was comparatively 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 


207 


easy, and a slanting board allowed the daring 
bellman to slide thence to the ground. He 
had come on business, and having talked it 
over slowly with the old man he turned to de- 
part. Though he was a genteel man, I heard 
him sigh heavily as, with the remark, “Ay, 
weel, I’ll be movin’ again,” he began to re- 
scale the wall. The patriarch, twisted round 
the pump, made no reply, so I ventured to sug- 
gest to the bellman that he might find the gate 
easier. “Is there a gate?” said Snecky, in 
surprise at the resources of civilization. I 
pointed it out to him, and he went his way 
chuckling. The old man told me that he had 
sometimes wondered at Snecky ’s mode of ap- 
proach, but it had not struck him to say any- 
thing. Afterward, when the bellman took 
up his abode there, they discussed the matter 
heavily. 

Hobart inherited both his bell and his nick- 
name from his father, who was not a native 
of Thrums. He came from some distant part 
where the people speak of snecking the door, 
meaning shut it. In Thrums the word used is 


208 


AIJLD LIGHT IDYLS. 


steek, and sneck seemed to the inhabitants so 
droll and ridiculous that Hobart got the name 
of Snecky. His son left Thrums at the age of 
ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not 
return until the old bellman's death, twenty 
years afterward ; but the first remark he over- 
heard on entering the kirk-wynd was a con- 
jecture flung across the street by a gray -haired 
crone, that he would be “little Snecky come to 
bury auld Snecky.” 

The father had a reputation in his day for 
“crying” crimes he was suspected of having 
committed himself, but the Snecky I knew 
had too high a sense of his own importance for 
that. On great occasions, such as the loss of 
little Davy Dun das, or when a tattie roup had 
to be cried, he was even offensively inflated ; 
but ordinary announcements, such as the ap- 
proach of a flying stationer, the roup of a de- 
ceased weaver’s loom, or the arrival in Thrums 
of a cart-load of fine “ kebec” cheeses, he treated 
as the merest trifles. I see still the bent legs 
of the snuffy old man straightening to the tin- 
kle of his bell, and the smirk with which he 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 


20D 


let the curious populace gather round him. 
In one hand he ostentatiously displayed the 
paper on which what he had to cry was writ- 
ten, but, like the minister, he scorned to 
“read.” With the hell carefully tucked under 
his oxter he gave forth his news in a rasping 
voice that broke now and again into a squeal. 
Though Scotch in his unofficial conversation, 
he was believed to deliver himself on public 
occasions in the finest English. When trotting 
from place to place with his news he carried 
his hell by the tongue as cautiously as if it 
were a flagon of milk. 

Snecky never allowed himself to degenerate 
into a mere machine. His proclamations were 
provided by those who employed him, but his 
soul was his own. Having cried a potato roup 
he would sometimes add a word of warning, 
«uch as, “I wudna advise ye, lads, to hae ony- 
thing to do wi’ thae tatties; they’re diseased.” 
Once, just before the cattle market, he was 
sent round by a local laird to announce that 
any drover found taking the short cut to the 

hill through the grounds of Muckle Plowy 
14 


210 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


would be prosecuted to the utmost limits of 
the law. The people were aghast. “ Hoots, 
lads,” Snecky said ; “ dinna fash yoursels. It’s 
juist a haver o’ the grieve’s.” One of Ho- 
bart’s ways of striking terror into evil-doers 
was to announce, when crying a crime, that 
he himself knew perfectly well who the cul- 
prit was. “I see him brawly,” he would say, 
“standing afore me, an’ if he disna instantly 
mak retribution, I am determined this very 
day to mak a public example of him.” 

Before the time of the Burke and Hare mur- 
ders Snecky ’s father was sent round Thrums 
to proclaim the startling news that a grave in 
the kirk-yard had been tampered with. The 
“resurrectionist” scare was at its height then, 
and the patriarch, who was one of the men in 
Thrums paid to watch new graves in the night- 
time, has often told the story. The town was 
in a ferment as the news spread, and there 
were fierce suspicious men among Hobart’s 
hearers who already had the rifler of graves in 
their eye. 

He was a man who worked for the farmers 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 


211 


when they required an extra hand, and loafed 
about the square when they could do without 
him. No one had a good word for him, and 
lately he had been flush of money. That was 
sufficient. There was a rush of angry men 
through the “pend” that led to his habitation, 
and he was dragged-, panting and terrified, to 
the kirk-yard before he understood what it all 
meant. To the grave they hurried him, and 
almost without a word handed him a spade. 
The whole town gathered round the spot — a 
sullen crowd, the women only breaking the si- 
lence with their sobs, and the children cling- 
ing to their gowns. The suspected resurrec- 
tionist understood what was wanted of him, 
and, flinging off his jacket, began to reopen 
the grave. Presently the spade struck upon 
wood, and by and by part of the coffin came in 
view. That was nothing, for the resurrection- 
ists had a way of breaking the coffin at one 
end and drawing out the body with tongs. 
The digger knew this. He broke the boards 
with the spade and revealed an arm. The peo- 
ple convinced, he dropped the arm savagely, 


212 


ATJLD LICHT IDYLS. 


leaped out of the grave and went his way, 
leaving them to shovel back the earth them- 
selves. 

There was humor in the old family as well 
as in their lodger. I found this out slowly. 
They used to gather round their peat fire in 
the evening, after the poultry had gone to 
sleep on the kitchen rafters, and take off their 
neighbors. None of them ever laughed; but 
their neighbors did afford them subject for gos- 
sip, and the old man was very sarcastic over 
other people’s old-fashioned ways. When one 
of the family wanted to go out he did it grad- 
ually. He would be sitting “ into the fire” 
browning his corduroy trousers, and he would 
get up slowly. Then he gazed solemnly before 
him for a time, and after that, if you watched 
him narrowly, you would see that he was 
really moving to the door. Another member 
of the family took the vacant seat with the 
same precautions. Wilburn, the eldest, has a 
gun, which customarily stands behind the old 
eight-day clock ; and he takes it with him to 
the garden to shoot the blackbirds. Long be- 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 


213 


fore Will’um is ready to let fly, the blackbirds 
have gone away; and so the gun is never, 
never fired; but there is a determined look 
on Will’um’s face when he returns from the 
garden. 

In the stormy days of his youth the old man 
had been a “ Black Nib. ” The Black Nibs were 
the persons who agitated against the French 
war ; and the public feeling against them ran 
strong and deep. In Thrums the local Black 
Nibs were burned in effigy, and whenever they 
put their heads out of doors they risked being 
stoned. Even where the authorities were un- 
prejudiced they were helpless to interfere; and 
as a rule they were as bitter against the Black 
Nibs as the populace themselves. Once the 
patriarch was running through the street with 
a score of the enemy at his heels, and the 
bailie, opening his window, shouted to them, 
“Stane the Black Nib oot o’ the toon! ” 

When the patriarch was a young man he 
was a follower of pleasure. This is the one 
thing about him that his family have never 
been able to understand. A solemn stroll 


214 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


through the kirk-yard was not sufficient relax- 
ation in those riotous times, after a hard day 
at the loom; and he rarely lost a chance of 
going to see a man hanged. There was a good 
deal of hanging in those days; and yet the 
authorities had an ugly way of reprieving con- 
demned men on whom the sight-seers had been 
counting. An air of gloom would gather on 
my old friend’s countenance when he told how 
he and his contemporaries in Thrums trudged 
every Saturday for six weeks to the county 
town, many miles distant, to witness the exe- 
cution of some criminal in whom they had local 
interest, and who, after disappointing them 
again and again, was said to have been bought 
off by a friend. His crime had been stolen 
entrance into a house in Thrums by the chim- 
ney, with intent to rob ; and though this old- 
fashioned family did not see it, not the least 
noticeable incident in the scrimmage that fol- 
lowed was the prudence of the canny house- 
wife. When she saw the legs coming down 
the lum, she rushed to the kail-pot which was 
on the fire and put on the lid. She confessed 


A VERY OLD FAMILY. 


215 


that this was not done to prevent the visitor’s 
scalding himself, hut to save the broth. 

The old man was repeated in his three sons. 
They told his stories precisely as he did himself, 
taking as long in the telling and making the 
points in exactly the same way. By and by 
they will come to think that they thetoselves 
were of those past times. Already the young 
ones look like contemporaries of their father. 


CHAPTER XL 

LITTLE RATHIE’S a BURAL.” 

Devout - under - Difficulties would have 
been the name of Lang Tamm as had he been 
of Covenanting times. So I thought one win- 
try afternoon, years before I went to the school - 
house, when he dropped in to ask the pleasure 
of my company to the farmer of Little Rath- 
ie’s “bural.” As a good Auld Licht, Tammas 
reserved his swallow-tail coat and “lum hat” 
(chimney-pot) for the kirk and funerals; but 
the coat would have flapped villanously, to 
Tammas’ eternal ignominy, had he for one 
rash moment relaxed his hold of the bottom 
button, and it was onty by walking sideways, 
as horses sometimes try to do, that the hat 
could be kept at the angle of decorum. Let 

it not be thought that Tammas had asked me 
216 


LITTLE RATHIE' S “ BURAL." 217 

to Little Rathie ’s funeral on his own responsi- 
bility. Burials were among the few events to 
break the monotony of an Auld Licht winter, 
and invitations were as much sought after as 
cards to my lady’s dances in the south. This 
had been a fair average season for Tammas, 
though of his four burials one had been a 
bairn’s — a mere bagatelle; but had it not been 
for the death of Little Rathie I would probably 
not have been out that year at all. 

The small farm of Little Rathie lies two 
miles from Thrums, and Tammas and I trudged 
manfully through the snow, adding to our 
numbers as we went. The dress of none dif- 
fered materially from the precentor’s, and the 
general effect was of septuagenarians in each 
other’s best clothes, though living in low -roofed 
houses had bent most of them before their 
time. By a rearrangement of garments, such 
as making Tammas change coat, hat, and 
trousers with Cragiebuckle, Silva McQueen, 
and Sam’l Wilkie respectively, a dexterous 
tailor might perhaps have supplied each with 
a “fit.” The talk was chiefly of Little Rathie, 


218 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


and sometimes threatened to become animated, 
when another mourner would fall in and re- 
store the more fitting gloom. 

“ Ay, ay,” the new-comer would say, by way 
of responding to the sober salutation, “Ay, 
Johnny.” Then there was silence, but for the 
“gluck”with which we lifted our feet from 
the slush. 

“ So Little Ratine’ s been ta’en awa’, ” Johnny 
would venture to say by and by. 

“He’s gone, Johnny; ay, man, he is so.” 

“Death must come to all,” some one would 
waken up to murmur. 

“Ay,” Lang Tammas would reply, putting 
on the coping-stone, “in the morning we are 
strong and in the evening we are cut down.” 

“We are so, Tammas; ou ay, we are so; 
we’re here the wan day an’ gone the neist.” 

“Little Rathie wasna a crittur I took till; 
no, I canna say he was,” said Bowie Haggart, 
so called because his legs described a parabola, 
“but he maks a vary creeditable corp [corpse]. 
I will say that for him. It’s wonderfu’ hoo 
death improves a body. Ye cudna hae said as 


LITTLE RATHIE' S “ BURAL.” 


219 


Little Rathie was a weel-faured man when he 
was i’ the flesh. ” 

Bowie was the wright, and attended burials 
in his official capacity. He had the gift of 
words to an uncommon degree, and I do not 
forget his crushing blow at the reputation of 
the poet Burns, as delivered under the auspices 
of the Thrums Literary Society. “I am of 
opeenion,” said Bowie, “that the works of 
Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not 
read them myself, but such is my opeenion.” 

“ He was a queer stock, Little Rathie, michty 
queer,” said Tammas Haggart, Bowie’s 
brother, who was a queer stock himself, but 
was not aware of it; “but, ou, I’m thinkin’ 
the wife had something to do wi’t. She was 
ill to manage, an’ Little Rathie hadna the way 
o’ the women. He hadna the knack o’ man- 
agin’ them ’s ye micht say-— no, Little Rathie 
hadna the knack.” 

“They’re kittle cattle, the women,” said the 
farmer of Craigiebuckle — son of the Craigie- 
buckle mentioned elsewhere — a little gloomily. 
“I’ve often thocht maiterimony is no onlike 


220 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


the lucky bags th’ auld wifies has at the 
muckly. There’s prizes an’ blanks baith in- 
side, but, losh, ye’re far frae sure what ye’ll 
draw oot when ye put in yer han’.” 

“Ou, weel,” said Tammas complacently, 
“there’s truth in what ye say, hut the women 
can he managed if ye have the knack.” 

“Some o’ them,” said Cragiebuckle wo- 
fully. 

“Ye had yer wark wi’ the wife yersel, Tam- 
mas, so ye had,” observed Lang Tammas, un- 
bending to suit his company. 

“Ye’re speakin’ aboot the bit wife’s bural,” 
said Tammas Haggart, with a chuckle ; “ ay, 
ay, that brocht her to reason.” 

Without much pressure Haggart retold a 
story known to the majority of his hearers. 
He had not the “knack” of managing women 
apparently when he married, for he and his 
gypsy wife “agreed ill thegither” at first. 
Once Chirsty left him and took up her abode 
in a house just across the wynd. Instead of 
routing her out, Tammas, without taking any 
one into his confidence, determined to treat 


LITTLE RATHIE' S “ BURAL." 221 

Chirsty as dead, and celebrate her decease in 
a “lyke wake” — a last wake. These wakes 
were very general in Thrums in the old days, 
though they had ceased to be common by the 
date of Little Ratine’ s death. For three days 
before the burial the friends and neighbors of 
the mourners were invited into the house to 
partake of food and drink by the side of the 
corpse. The dead lay on chairs covered with a 
white sheet. Dirges were sung and the de- 
ceased was extolled, but when night came the 
lights were extinguished and the corpse was 
left alone. On the morning of the funeral 
tables were spread with a white cloth outside 
the house, and food and drink were placed 
upon them. No neighbor could pass the tables 
without paying his respects to the dead ; and 
even when the house was in a busy, narrow 
thoroughfare, this part of the ceremony was 
never omitted. Tammas did not give Chirsty 
a wake inside the house ; but one Friday morn- 
ing — it was market-day, and the square was 
consequently full — it went through the town 
that the tables were spread before his door. 


222 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


Young and old collected, wandering round the 
house, and Tammas stood at the tables in his 
blacks inviting every one to eat and drink. 
He was pressed to tell what it meant; but 
nothing could be got from him except that his 
wife was dead. At times he pressed his hands 
to his heart, and then he would make wry 
faces, trying hard to cry. Chirsty watched 
from a window across the street, until she per- 
haps began to fear that she really was dead. 
Unable to stand it any longer, she rushed out 
into her husband’s arms, and shortly after- 
ward she could have been seen dismantling 
the tables. 

“She’s gone this fower year,” Tammas said, 
when he had finished his story, “but up to the 
end I had no more trouble wi’ Chirsty. No, I 
had the knack o’ her.” 

“I’ve heard tell, though,” said the sceptical 
Craigiebuckle, “as Chirsty only cam back to 
ye because she cudna bear to see the fowk 
makkin’ sae free wi’ the whiskey.” 

“ I mind hoo she bottled it up at ance and 
drove the laddies awa’,” said Bowie, “an’ I 


LITTLE RATHIE’S “ BTJRAL.” 


223 


hae seen her after that, Tammas, giein’ ye up 
yer fut an’ you no sayin’ a word.” 

“Ou, ay,” said the wife-tamer, in the tone 
of a man who could afford to be generous in 
trifles, “women maun talk, an’ a man hasna 
aye time to conterdick them, but frae that 
day I had the knack o’ Chirsty.” 

“Donal Elshioner’s was a vary seemilar 
case, ” broke in Snecky Hobart shrilly. “ Maist 
o’ ye’ll mind ’at Donal was michty plagueit 
wi’ a drucken wife. Ay, weel, wan. day 
Bowie’s man was carry in’ a coffin past Donal’ s 
door, and Donal an’ the wife was there. Says 
Donal, ‘Put doon yer coffin, my man, an’ tell’s 
wha it’s for.’ The laddie rests the coffin on 
its end, an’ says he, ‘It’s for Davie Fair- 
brother’s guid-wife. ’ ‘Ay, then, ’ says Donal, 
‘tak it awa’, tak it awa’ to Davie, an’ tell ’im 
as ye kin a man wi’ a wife ’at wid be glad to 
neifer [exchange] wi’ him.’ Man, that terri- 
fied Donal’s wife; it did so.” 

As we delved up the twisting road between 
two fields that leads to the farm of Little Ra- 
thie, the talk became less general, and another 


224 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


mourner who joined us there was told that the 
farmer was gone. 

“We must all fade as a leaf,” said Lang 
Tammas. 

“So we maun, so we maun,” admitted the 
new-comer. “They say,” he added, solemnly, 
“as Little Rathie has left a full teapot.” 

The reference was to the safe in which the 
old people in the district stored their gains. 

“He was thrifty,” said Tammas Haggart, 
“an’ shrewd, too, was Little Rathie. I mind 
Mr. Dishart admonishin’ him for no attendin’ 
a special weather service i’ the kirk, when 
Finny an’ Lin tool, the twa adjoinin’ farmers, 
baith attendit. ‘Ou, ’ says Little Rathie, ‘I 
thocht to mysel, thinks I, if they get rain for 
prayin’ for’t on Finny an’ Lin tool, we’re bound 
to get the benefit o’t on Little Rathie. ’ ” 

“Tod,” said Snecky, “there’s some sense in 
that; an’ what says the minister? ” 

“I d’na kin what he said,” admitted Hag- 
gart; “but he took Little Rathie up to the 
manse, an’ if ever I saw a man lookin’ sma’, 
it was Little Rathie when he cam oot.” 


LITTLE RATHIE’S 11 BXJRAL. ” 


225 


The deceased had left behind him a daughter 
(herself now known as Little Rathie), quite 
capable of attending to the ramshackle “but 
and ben and I remember how she nipped off 
Tammas’ consolations to go out and feed the 
hens. To the number of about twenty we as- 
sembled round the end of the house to escape 
the bitter wind, and here I lost the precentor, 
who, as an Auld Licht elder, joined the chief 
mourners inside. The post of distinction at a 
funeral is near the coffin ; but it is not given 
to every one to be a relative of the deceased, and 
there is always much competition and genteelly 
concealed disappointment over the few open 
vacancies. The window of the room was de- 
cently veiled, but the mourners outside knew 
what was happening within, and that it was 
not all prayer, neither mourning. A few of 
the more reverent uncovered their heads at in- 
tervals ; but it would be idle to deny that there 
was a feeling that Little Rathie’s daughter 
was favoring Tammas and others somewhat 
invidiously. Indeed, Robbie Gibruth did not 

scruple to remark that she had made “an in- 
15 


226 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


auspeecious beginning.” Tammas Haggart, 
who was melancholy when not sarcastic, though 
he brightened up wonderfully at funerals, re- 
minded Eobbie that disappointment is the lot 
of man on his earthly pilgrimage ; but Hag- 
gart knew who were to be invited back after 
the burial to the farm, and was inclined to 
make much of his position. The secret would 
doubtless have been wormed from him had not 
public attention been directed into another 
channel. A prayer was certainly being offered 
up inside ; but the voice was not the voice of 
the minister. 

Lang Tammas told me afterward that it 
had seemed at one time “vary questionable” 
whether Little Eathie would be buried that 
day at all. The incomprehensible absence of 
Mr. Dishart (afterward satisfactorily explained) 
had raised the unexpected question of the le- 
gality of a burial in a case where the minister 
had not prayed over the “corp.” There had 
even been an indulgence in hot words, and the 
Eeverend Alexander Kewans, a “ stickit min- 


LITTLE RATHIE'S “ BXJRAL. ” 


227 


ister,” but not of the Anld Licht persuasion, 
had withdrawn in dudgeon on hearing Tam- 
mas asked to conduct the ceremony instead of 
himself. But, great as Tammas was on relig- 
ious questions, a pillar of the Auld Licht kirk, 
the Shorter Catechism at his finger-ends, a 
sad want of words at the very time when he 
needed them most incapacitated him for 
prayer in public, and it was providential that 
Bowie proved himself a man of parts. But 
Tammas tells me that the wright grossly abused 
his position, by praying at such length that 
Craigiebuckle fell asleep, and the mistress had 
to rise and hang the pot on the fire higher up 
the joist, lest its contents should burn before 
the return from the funeral. Loury grew the 
sky, and more and more anxious the face of 
Little Rathie’s daughter, and still Bowie 
prayed on. Had it not been for the impatience 
of the precentor and the grumbling of the 
mourners outside, there is no saying when the 
remains would have been lifted through the 
“bole,” or little window. 


228 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


Hearses had hardly come in at this time, and 
the coffin was carried by the mourners on long 
stakes. The straggling procession of pedes- 
trians behind wound its slow way in the waning 
light to the kirk -yard, showing startlingly 
black against the dazzling snow ; and it was 
not until the earth rattled on the coffin -lid 
that Little Rathie’s nearest male relative 
seemed to remember his last mournful duty to 
the dead. Sidling up to the favored mourn- 
ers, he remarked casually and in the most 
emotionless tone lie could assume: “They’re 
expec’in’ ye to stap doon the length o’ Little 
Rathie noo. Aye, aye, he’s gone. Na, na, 
nae refoosal, Da-avit; ye was aye a guid friend 
till him, an’ it’s ony thing a body can do for 
him noo.” 

Though the uninvited slunk away sorrow- 
fully, the entertainment provided at Auld 
Licht houses of mourning was characteristic 
of a stern and sober sect. They got to eat and 
to drink to the extent, as a rule, of a “lippy” 
of short bread and a “ brew” of toddy ; but open 


LITTLE RATHIE’S “RURAL." 


229 


Bibles lay on the table, and the eyes of each 
were on his neighbors to catch them transgress- 
ing, and offer up a prayer for them on the 
spot. Ay me ! there is no Bowie nowadays to 
fill an absent minister’s shoes. 


CHAPTER XII. 


A LITERARY CLUB. 

The ministers in the town did not hold with 
literature. When the most notorious of the 
clubs met in the town-house under the presi- 
dentship of Gavin Ogilvy, who was no better 
than a poacher, and was troubled in his mind 
because writers called Pope a poet, there was 
frequently a wrangle over the question, “Is 
literature necessarily immoral?” It was a 
fighting club, and on Friday nights the few 
respectable, God-fearing members dandered to 
the town-house, as if merely curious to have 
another look at the building. If Lang Tarn- 
mas, who was dead against letters, was in 
sight they wandered off, but when there were 
no spies abroad they slunk up the stair. The 
attendance was greatest on dark nights, though 

Gavin himself and some other characters would 
230 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


231 


have marched straight to the meeting in broad 
daylight. Tammas Haggart, who did not 
think much of Milton’s devil, had married a 
gypsy woman for an experiment, and the Coat 
of Many Colors did not know where his wife 
was. As a rule, however, the members were 
wild bachelors. When they married they had 
to settle down. 

Gavin’s essay on Will’um Pitt, the Father 
of the Taxes, led to the club’s being bundled 
out of the town-house, where people said it 
should never have been allowed to meet. 
There was a terrible towse when Tammas Hag- 
gart then disclosed the secret of Mr. Byars’ 
supposed approval of the club. Mr. Byars was 
the Auld Licht minister whom Mr. Dishart 
succeeded, and it was well known that he had 
advised the authorities to grant the use of the 
little town-house to the club on Friday even- 
ings. As he solemnly warned his congrega- 
tion against attending the meetings, the 
position he had taken up created talk, and 
Lang Tammas called at the manse with San- 
ders Whamond to remonstrate. The minister, 


232 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


however, harangued them on their sinfulness 
in daring to question the like of him, and 
they had to retire vanquished though dissat- 
isfied. Then came the disclosures of Tammas 
Haggart, who was never properly secured by 
the Auld Lichts until Mr. Dishart took him 
in hand. It was Tammas who wrote anony- 
mous letters to Mr. Byars about the scarlet 
woman, and, strange to say, this led to the 
club’s being allowed to meet in the town- 
house. The minister, after many days, discov- 
ered who his correspondent was, and succeeded 
in inveigling the stone -breaker to the manse. 
There, with the door snibbed, he opened out on 
Tammas, who, after his usual manner when 
hard pressed, pretended to be deaf. This sud- 
den fit of deafness so exasperated the minister 
that he flung a hook at Tammas. The scene 
that followed was one that few Auld Licht 
manses can have witnessed. According to 
Tammas, the book had hardly reached the floor 
when the minister turned white. Tammas 
picked up the missile. It was a Bible. The 
two men looked at each other. Beneath the 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


233 


window Mr. Byars’ children were prattling. 
His wife was moving about in the next room, 
little thinking what had happened. The min- 
ister held out his hand for the Bible, but Tarn- 
mas shook his head, and then Mr. Byars shrank 
into a chair. Finally, it was arranged that if 
Tammas kept the affair to himself the minis- 
ter would say a good word to the bailie about 
the literary club. After that the stone-breaker 
used to go from house to house, twisting his 
mouth to the side and remarking that he could 
tell such a tale of Mr. Byars as would lead to 
a split in the kirk. When the town-house was 
locked on the club Tammas spoke out, but 
though the scandal ran from door to door, as 
I have seen a pig in a fluster do, the minister 
did not lose his place. Tammas preserved the 
Bible, and showed it complacently to visitors 
as the present he got from Mr. Byars. The 
minister knew this, and it turned his temper 
sour. Tammas’ proud moments, after that, 
were when he passed the minister. 

Driven from the town-house, literature 
found a table with forms round it in a tavern 


234 


ATJLD LICET IDYLS. 


hard by, where the club, lopped of its most re* 
spectable members, kept the blinds down and 
talked openly of Shakespeare. . It was a low- 
roofed room, with pieces of lime hanging from 
the ceiling and peeling walls. The floor had 
a slope that tended to fling the debater for- 
ward, and its boards, lying loose on an uneven 
foundation, rose and looked at you as you 
crossed the room. In winter, when the meet- 
ings were held regularly every fortnight, a fire 
of peat, sod, and dross lit up the curious com- 
pany who sat round the table shaking’ their 
heads over Shelley’s mysticism, or requiring 
to be called to order because they would not 
wait their turn to deny an essayist’s assertion 
that Berkeley’s style was superior to David " 
Hume’s. Davit Hume, they said, and Watty 
Scott. Burns was simply referred to as Rob 
or Robbie. 

There was little drinking at these meetings, 
for the members knew what they were talking 
about, and your mind had to gallop to keep up 
with the flow of reasoning. Thrums is rather 
a remarkable town. There are scores and 


.4 LITERARY CLUB. 


235 


scores of houses in it that have sent their sons 
to college (by what a struggle!), some to make 
their way to the front in their professions, and 
others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never 
to be a patch on their parents. In that liter- 
ary club there were men of a reading so wide 
and catholic that it might put some graduates 
of the universities to shame, and of an intellect 
so keen that had it not had a crook in it their 
fame would have crossed the county. Most of 
them had but a threadbare existence, for you 
weave slowly with a Wordsworth open before 
you, and some were strange Bohemians (which 
does not do in Thrums), yet others wandered 
into the world and compelled it to recognize 
them. There is a London barrister whose father 
belonged to the club. Not many years ago a 
man died on the staff of the Times , who, when 
he was a weaver near Thrums, was one of the 
club’s prominent members. He taught him- 
self shorthand by the light of a cruizey, and 
got a post on a Perth paper, afterward on the 
Scotsman and the Witness, and finally on the 
Times. Several other men of his type had a 


236 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


history worth reading, but it is not for me to 
write. Yet I may say that there is still at 
least one of the original members of the club 
left behind in Thrums to whom some of the 
literary dandies might lift their hats. 

Gavin Ogilvy I only knew as a weaver and 
a poacher; a lank, long-armed man, much bent 
from crouching in ditches whence he Watched 
his snares. To the young he was a romantic 
figure, because they saw him frequently in the 
fields with his call-birds tempting siskins, yel- 
low yites, and linties to twigs which he had 
previously smeared with lime. He made the 
lime from the tough roots of holly ; sometimes 
from linseed oil, which is boiled until thick, 
when it is taken out of the pot and drawn and 
stretched with the hands like elastic. Gavin 
was also a famous hare-snarer at a time when 
the ploughman looked upon this form of poach- 
ing as his perquisite. The snare was of wire, 
so constructed that the hare entangled itself 
the more when trying to escape, and it was 
placed across the little roads through the fields 
to which hares confine themselves, with a 


A LITERARY CLUB . 


237 


heavy stone attached to it by a string. Once 
Gavin caught a toad (fox) instead of a hare, 
and did not discover his mistake until it had 
him by the teeth. He was not able to weave 
for two months. The grouse- netting was more 
lucrative and more exciting, and women en- 
gaged in it with their husbands. It is told of 
Gavin that he was on one occasion chased by a 
game-keeper over moor and hill for twenty 
miles, and that by and by when the one sank 
down exhausted so did the other. They vmuld 
sit fifty yards apart, glaring at each other. 
The poacher eventually escaped. This, curi- 
ous as it may seem, is the man whose eloquence 
at the club has not been forgotten in fifty 
years. “Thus did he stand,” I have been told 
recently, “exclaiming in language sublime 
that the soul shall bloom in immortal youth 
through the ruin and wrack of time.” 

Another member read to the club an account 
of his journey to Lochnagar, which was after- 
ward published in Chambers' 1 s Journal. He 
was celebrated for his descriptions of scenery, 
and was not the only member of the club whose 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


essays got into print. More memorable per- 
haps was an itinerant match-seller known to 
Thrums and the surrounding towns as the 
literary spunk-seller. He was a wizened, shiv- 
ering old man, often barefooted, wearing at 
the best a thin ragged coat that had been black 
but was green-brown with age, and he made 
his spunks as well as sold them. He brought 
Bacon and Adam Smith into Thrums, and he 
loved to recite long screeds from Spenser, with 
a running commentary on the versification and 
the luxuriance of the diction. Of Jamie’s 
death I do not care to write. He went with- 
out many a dinner in order to buy a book. 

The Coat of Many Colors and Silva Robbie 
were two street preachers who gave the 
Thrums ministers some work. They occasion- 
ally appeared at the club. The Coat of Many 
Colors was so called because he wore a garment 
consisting of patches of cloth of various colors 
sewed together. It hung down to his heels. 
He may have been cracked rather than in- 
spired, but he was a power in the square where 
he preached, the women declaring that he was 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


239 


gifted by God. An awe filled even the men 
when he admonished them for using strong 
language, for at such a time he would remind 
them of the woe which fell upon Tibbie Mason. 
Tibbie had been notorious in her day for evil- 
speaking, especially for her free use of the 
word handless, which she flung a hundred 
times in a week at her man, and even at her 
old mother. Her punishment was to have a 
son born without hands. The Coat of Many 
Colors also told of the liar who exclaimed, “ If 
this is not gospel true may I stand here for- 
ever,” and who is standing on that spot still, 
only nobody knows where it is. George Wi- 
shart was the Coat’s hero, and often he has told 
in the square how Wishart saved Dundee. It 
was the time when the plague lay over Scot- 
land, and in Dundee they saw it approaching 
from the West in the form of a great black 
cloud. They fell on their knees and prayed, 
crying to the cloud to pass them by, and while 
they prayed it came nearer. Then they looked 
around for the most holy man among them, to 
intervene with God on their behalf. All eyes 


240 


ATJLD LIGHT IDYLS. 


turned to George Wishart,‘and he stood up, 
stretching his arms to the cloud, and prayed, 
and it rolled back. Thus Dundee was saved 
from the plague, hut when Wishart ended his 
prayer he was alone, for the people had all re- 
turned to their homes. Less of a genuine man 
than the Coat of Many Colors was Silva Rob- 
bie, who had horrid fits of laughing in the 
middle of his prayers, and even fell in a parox- 
ysm of laughter from the chair on which he 
stood. In the club he said things not to he 
borne, though logical up to a certain point. 

Tammas Haggart was the most sarcastic 
member of the club, being celebrated for his 
sarcasm far and wide. It was a remarkable 
thing about him, often spoken of, that if you 
went to Tammas with a stranger and asked 
him to say a sarcastic thing that the man 
might take away as a specimen, he could not 
do it. “Na, na,” Tammas would say, after a 
few trials, referring to sarcasm, “ she’s no a 
crittur to force. Ye maun lat her tak her ain 
time. Sometimes she’s dry like the pump, an’ 
syne, again, oot she comes in a gush.” The 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


241 


most sarcastic thing the stone-breaker ever 
said was frequently marvelled over in Thrums, 
both before and behind his face, hut unfortu- 
nately no one could ever remember what it 
was. The ‘subject, however, was Cha Tarn- 
son’s potato pit. There is little doubt that it 
was a fit of sarcasm that induced Tammas to 
marry a gypsy lassie. Mr. Byars would not 
join them, so Tammas had himself married by 
Jimmy Pawse, the gay little gypsy king, and 
after that the minister remarried them. The 
marriage over the tongs is a thing to scandal- 
ize any well-brought-up person, for before he 
joined the couple’s hands Jimmy jumped 
about in a startling way, uttering wild gibber- 
ish, and after the ceremony was over there was 
rough work, with incantations and blowing on 
pipes. Tammas always held that this mar- 
riage turned out better than he had expected, 
though he had his trials like other married 
men. Among them was Chirsty’s way of 
climbing on to the dresser to get at the higher 
part of the plate-rack. One evening I called 

in to have a smoke with the stone-breaker, and 
16 

\ J 


242 


AULD LICHT IDYLS. 


while we were talking Chirsty climbed the 
dresser. The next moment she was on the 
floor on her hack, wailing, but Tammas smoked 
on imperturbably. “Do you not see what has 
happened, man?” I cried. “Ou,”said Tam- 
mas, “she’s aye fa’in aff the dresser.” 

Of the school-masters who were at times 
members of the club, Mr. Dickie was the ripest 
scholar, but my predecessor at the school- 
house had a way of sneering at him that was 
as good as sarcasm. When they were on their 
legs at the same time, asking each other pas- 
sionately to he calm, and rolling out lines from 
Homer that made the inn -keeper look fear- 
fully to the fastenings of the door, their heads 
very nearly came together, although the table 
was between them. The old dominie had an 
advantage in being the shorter man, for he 
could hammer on the table as he spoke, while 
gaunt Mr. Dickie had to stoop to it. Mr. 
McRittie’s arguments were a series of nails 
that he knocked into the table, and he did 
it in a workmanlike manner. Mr. Dickie, 
though he kept firm on his feet, swayed his 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


243 


body until by and by his head was rotating in 
a large circle. The mathematical figure he 
made was a cone revolving on its apex. Ga- 
vin’s reinstalment in the chair year after year 
was made by the disappointed dominie the sub- 
ject of some tart verses which he called an 
epode, but Gavin crushed him when they were 
read before the club. “Satire,” he said, “is 
a legitimate weapon, used with michty effect 
by Swift, Sammy Butler, and others, and I 
dount object to being made the subject of creet- 
icism. It has often been called a t’nife [knife], 
but them as is not used to t’nives cuts their 
hands, and ye’ll a’ observe that Mr. McRittie’s 
fingers is bleedin ’ . ” All eyes were turned upon 
the dominie’s hand, and though he pocketed it 
smartly several members had seen, the blood. 
The dominie was a rare visitor at the club after 
that, though, he outlived poor Mr. Dickie by 
many years. Mr. Dickie was a teacher in 
Tilliedrum, but he was ruined by drink. He 
wandered from town to town, reciting Greek 
and Latin poetry to any one who would give 
him a dram, and sometimes he wept and 


244 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


moaned aloud in the street, crying, “Poor Mr. 
Dickie ! poor Mr. Dickie ! ” 

The leading poet in a club of poets was Dite 
Walls, who kept a school when there were 
scholars and weaved when there were none. 
He had a song that was published in a half- 
penny leaflet about the famous lawsuit insti- 
tuted by the farmer of Teuchbusses against the 
Laird of Drumlee. The laird was alleged to 
have taken from the land of Teuchbusses suf- 
ficient broom to make a besom thereof, and I 
am not certain that the case is settled to this 
day. It was Dite, or another member of the 
club, who wrote “The Wife o’ Deeside,” of all 
the songs of the period the one that had the 
greatest vogue in the county at a time when 
Lord Jeffrey was cursed at every fireside in 
Thrums. The wife of Deeside was tried for 
the murder of her servant, who had infatuated 
the young laird, and had it not been that Jeffrey 
defended her she would, in the words of the 
song, have “hung like a troot.” It is not easy 
now to conceive the rage against Jeffrey when 
the woman was acquitted. The song was sung 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


245 


and recited in the streets, at the smiddy, in 
bothies, and by firesides, to the shaking of fists 
and the grinding of teeth. It began: 

“Ye’ll a’ hae hear tell o’ the wife o’ Deeside, 

Ye’ll a’ hae hear tell o’ the wife o’ Deeside, 

She poisoned her maid for to keep up her pride, 
Ye’ll a’ hae hear tell o’ the wife o’ Deeside.” 

Before the excitement had abated, Jeffrey 
was in Tilliedrum for electioneering purposes, 
and he was mobbed in the streets. Angry 
crowds pressed close to howl “Wife o’ Dee- 
side!” at him. A contingent from Thrums 
was there, and it was long afterward told of 
Sam’l Todd, by himself, that he hit Jeffrey on 
the back of the head with a clod of earth. 

Johnny McQuhatty, a brother of the T’ now- 
head farmer, was the one taciturn member of 
the club, and you had only to look at him to 
know that he had a secret. He was a great 
genius at the hand-loom, and invented a loom 
for the weaving of linen such as has not been 
seen before or since. In the day-time he kept 
guard over his “shop,” into which no one was 
allowed to enter, and the fame of his loom was 


246 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


so great that he had to watch over it with a 
gun. At night he weaved, and when the 
result at last pleased him he made the linen 
into shirts, all of which he stitched together 
with his own hands, even to the button-holes. 
He sent one shirt to the Queen, and another to 
the Duchess of Athole, mentioning a very large 
price for them, which he got. Then he de- 
stroyed his wonderful loom, and how it was 
made no one will ever know. Johnny only 
took to literature after he had made his name, 
and he seldom spoke at the club except when 
ghosts and the like were the subject of debate, 
as they tended to he when the farmer of 
Muckle Haws could get in a word. Muckle 
Haws was fascinated by Johnny’s sneers at 
superstition, and sometimes on dark nights the 
inventor had to make his courage good by see- 
ing the farmer past the doulie yates (ghost 
gates), which Muckle Haws had to go peril- 
ously near on his way home. Johnny was a 
small man, but it was the burly farmer who 
shook at sight of the gates standing out white 
in the night. White gates have an evil name 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


247 


still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors as 
he drew near them, clinging to Johnny’s arm. 
It was on such a night, he would remember, 
that he saw the White Lady go through the 
gates greeting sorely, with a dead bairn in her 
arms, while water kelpie laughed and splashed 
in the pools and the witches danced in a ring 
round Broken Buss. That very night twelve 
months ago the packman was murdered at 
Broken Buss, and Easie Pettie hanged herself 
on the stump of a tree. Last night there were 
ugly sounds from the quarry of Croup, where 
the bairn lies buried, and it’s not mous (canny) 
to be out at such a time. The farmer had seen 
spectre maidens walking round the ruined 
castle of Darg, and the castle all lit up with 
flaring torches, and dead knights and ladies 
sitting in the halls at the wine-cup, and the 
devil himself flapping his wings on the ram- 
parts. 

When the debates were political, two mem- 
bers with the gift of song fired the blood with 
their own poems about taxation and the de- 
population of the Highlands, and by selling 


248 


AULD LIGHT IDYLS. 


these songs from door to door they made their 
livelihood. 

Books and pamphlets were brought into the 
town by the flying stationers, as they were 
called, who visited the square periodically car- 
rying their wares on their backs, except at the 
Muckly, when they had their stall and even 
sold books by auction. The flying stationer 
best known to Thrums was Sandersy Kiach, 
who was stricken from head to foot with the 
palsy, and could only speak with a quaver in 
consequence. Sandersy brought to the mem- 
bers of the club all the great books he could 
get second-hand, but his stock in trade was 
Thrummy Cap and Akenstaff, the Fishwives 
of Buckhaven, the Devil upon Two Sticks, Gil- 
deroy, Sir James the Bose, the Brownie of Ba- 
denoch, the Ghaist of Firenden, and the like. 
It was from Sandersy that Tammas Haggart 
bought his copy of Shakespeare, whom Mr. 
Dishart could never abide. Tammas kept 
what he had done from his wife, but Chirsty 
saw a deterioration setting in and told the 
minister of her suspicions. Mr. Dishart was 


A LITERARY CLUB. 


249 


newly placed at the time and very vigorous, 
and the way he shook the truth out of Tam- 
mas was grand. The minister pulled Tammas 
the one way and Gavin pulled him the other, 
but Mr. Dishart was not the man to be beaten, 
and he landed Tammas in the Auld Licht kirk 
before the year was out. Chirsty buried 
Shakespeare in the yard. 














































































































































































































































































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